"Cousin Barack? No. No, we haven't. We haven't had the opportunity to talk about it," Dick Cheney told the press today, when asked whether he had spoken with Barack Obama about the fact that the two men are distant cousins, AFP reports. "I didn't know whether that would help him or hurt him," said Cheney, "So I thought I'd probably stay away from it."
This suggeston that blood is not always thicker than water came courtesy of Cheney's wife Lynne, who noticed the intertwining family trees while researching her memoir. Obama reacted to the news of their shared 17th-century ancestor with humor, pointing out that "Every family has its black sheep." (More Barack Obama stories.)