It would be offensive if a teacher really says that…
It took me a while to realize the joke is (supposed to be) the teacher thinks he’s inbred because he’s *stupid*, not because he’s ugly.
I don’t think a strip quite as painfully ugly as Close To Home should be making inbreeding jokes.
generations OF inbreeding?
@ Phil – I noticed that typo in the headline, too, but it’s not clear whether Bill copied and pasted it from B.A.’s submission, or retypoed the “on” by himself.
It was my error.
And even if it hadn’t been originally, copying somebody else’s error is also an error, so there was no way I get out of this unscathed.
I don’t know exactly what is wrong with the people in this strip, but it’s not inbreeding. If inbreeding did that, the royal families of europe would all look like that.
I also tend to assume royal families of Europe when I think of inbreeding, and the characters in Close to Home have the opposite of the Hapsburg chin.
My in-laws actually got asked how closely they were related at one point. But that was by a medical professional, and there are a number of close-ish marriages in their ethnic group (the doctor, of course, would have been even more used to seeing the closely related ones, as they would be that much more likely to show up with seizures or whatever.)
Howso “the opposite,” Christine?
Sheep, it’s actually possible the teacher said it figuring they wouldn’t understand what she meant.
When my wife was in elementary school, the teacher called a girl a meeskite, assuming she wouldn’t know it was Yiddish for ugly. The kid said “You’re not so pretty yourself.”
Some personal synchronicity:
I follow a Facebook group for people whose families summered in the Catskills (until the 1970s, an area in Central New York catering to Jewish families — having come into existence a century or so earlier because other resorts proudly posted signs saying they don’t cater to “dogs or Hebrews”).
People were discussing their first boy/girlfriends during those summers, one one woman said there was a boy she really liked, and they went into the woods to make out (whatever that actually meant in the early 60s), and when she got back her parents told her the boy was actually a distant cousin.
Somebody else in the group pointed out that the whole area was filled with Jewish families from New York City’s Outer Boroughs (everywhere but Manhattan), and ANY two random people there have a pretty good chance of being distant cousins.
Bill, I would describe the Close to Home chin as being very weak and round. I’m not sure what else would be the opposite of a prominent pointy chin.
Marrying a “distant cousin” is actually not uncommon. It’s just that most people have no clue who their third cousins are, let alone any further. I’ve never understood the “OMG, at least it’s by marriage” reaction when someone discovers that their fiancé(e) is a fourth or fifth cousins. I have never seen hard data, but I’m pretty sure that there is a high degree of overlap between cultures where people actually know their relatives out that far, and cultures where people are less concerned about marrying distant relatives.
It wasn’t until after Ronald Reagan appointed Donald Regan Secretary of the Treasury that they found out they were fifth cousins.
Ah. Sorry, Christine, I wasn’t thinking about the Hapsburg chin specifically.
Assuming I did my math right, if Reagan and Regan really were fifth cousins, that means they shared great^5 grandparents, which is to say, 2 out of 128 great^5 grandparents, which is to say 126 of their great^5 grandparents were NOT the same. They share ~.4% of their genes…
Christine: are you saying cultures that do know who their nth cousin is don’t care about marrying cousins, and cultures who don’t know who their third cousin is do care about not marrying cousins? That would be interesting…
My point was, larK, how easy it is not to know who your fifth cousins are.
(That said, Donald Regan seemed to have an odd lack of curiosity over whether he was related to a president named Reagan)
larK – I am saying that. Admittedly, I have a very small sample size. However, it also bears out logically. You have a shitload of fifth cousins. Marrying one isn’t that incredibly unlikely. So the reason we’re grossed out by it in generic American culture (i.e. people who don’t really have a particular strong ethnic identity) is that we don’t know it happens.
Cultures that are keeping track of family to that degree are probably also ones where people are more likely to marry within the culture (if only based on the fact that without the cultural reinforcement the practice will die out, so people who did a lot of marrying out are less likely to keep that up. But also being a small distinct cultural group will lead to an increased value in knowing who you are, and tracking family history.) This makes marrying one of the fifth cousins even more likely. It’s just not going to be sustainable if people go “ew, I can’t marry them, we’re related to .4%”.
As it happens, the wife of my first cousin once removed downward is a genealogist, so the number for relatives I can pin down borders on the insane. If you ever hear about lawsuits to force government agencies to release genealogical information, that’s probably her.
After all this (eminently justified) commentary about the extreme ugliness of the characters in “Close to Home”, I have to say that in this panel, McPherson seems to have exerted himself: the father is just as hideous as one would expect (particularly the eyes and beard), but the mother and especially the son are surprisingly acceptable (at least by “Close to Home” standards).
P.S. Does anyone have an idea what the six-legged creature between the rungs on the back of the chair is supposed to be? I sure hope that McPherson has not started to copy Piraro’s Easter eggs.
Here’s a good rule of thumb: if nobody at your wedding, when asked whether they’re part of the bride’s family or the groom’s family hesitates before answering, you’re probably okay.
P.S. Having abused my eyes by reviewing the “Close to Home” tag in the CIDU archive, the ugly truth is that McPherson started including that misbegotten creature in every panel sometime between June and November of last year (2018). It’s almost as bad as the squirrel, but thankfully the thing does not talk.
I not only know all of my third cousins – I know most of their other side cousins also. First cousins I know all of their other side cousins. Robert has no first cousins and is not sure if he has second cousins – beyond that would be too much for him to think about.
Having said that – early in our dating his paternal grandfather died. His parents and sister were in France at the time, so we went to the wake with his maternal grandparents (an amazing thing since when we got married a few years later his grandparents were still not talking to the other grandparent(s) from when his parents got married.
His assorted relatives not knowing his family was away all assumed I was his sister (who is 9 years younger than him). Not a family that sees each other a lot.
There are those who are confused about us – we walk through a park every day as we park our car there and walk to the Post Office to check our box. We pass the woman who works in the tennis court reservation booth and a man who works with her. After several years of walking 5 days a week we had started nodding at each other. Then saying hello. One day she stops us – “I am sorry, but I have to know. How are you related?” Yeah, we have started to look too much a like. Two short cubby people…
I’ve been mistaken for my sister-in-law a few times, which is hilarious, as she is this tiny petite blonde thing, and I’m average height, got a very solid build, and am fat on top of that, with dark hair. (Interestingly enough we can both wear the same colours, which helps.) I look a lot more like my husband than she does. It’s funny though, because there is a bit of a “look” for their ethnic group. Not that it’s super-strong, but it makes it funnier than I’d get lumped in for her. (Of course, I don’t look particularly French-Canadian either, and there was the time on the train that they were going down asking “coffee? Coffee? Coffee? Café?” with the French being when they got to me).
When we got married I assumed my husband’s name, so the best incident of me getting mistaken for his sister was when someone asked “Are you [name]s?”, and when we answered in the affirmative assumed I was the sister. She used to babysit them, which makes it even funnier. (I know a lot of kids have their hair darken, but mine was never blonde, and hers was so incredibly pale as a kid it’s funny that someone would think she could look like me, even aside from the size.)
And the good news is that the stories of the couple that still saw each other at family reunions after they were divorced are rare enough that they stand out for a reason. (The couple were at least second cousins, if not further, so it isn’t actually a close marriage.)
My friend who comes from a nearby smaller city where her family remained was in the habit for a long time of returning there for things like getting her hair done or visiting the dentist, at providers that were old favorites in the family. One time at the dentist, they had pulled up her sister-in-law’s records from a same-name situation like those above. (Of course after a moment of befuddlement it was straightened out pretty quickly, since nothing matched.)
When anyone asks either or both of us on hearing our (Robert’s) last name if we are related to…. We stop them at that point and say no. We are the only people left in the family with his last name. Unlike me who went to hyphenated name for legal purposes, but mostly just use his last name, his sister just changed her last name to her husband’s. There are some cousins of several degrees away from from him around on his dad’s side but they have the original family name. Only descendants of his paternal grandfather have our last name. His dad had one sister, who had no children, and died some years ago. He has the one sister. So it is just us.
Where did our last name come from? His grandfather had the original Italian version ending in “zini”. His first name was Giovanni Battista (John the Baptist). He joined the US cavalry around the time of WWI and was sent to Mexico with General Pershing chasing down Pancho Villa.
He was offered US Citizenship for his service and his name was changed at that time to James (anglicized version of the last name). I have never understood why his name was not just changed to John instead of James.
So the two of us are it for the last name in the family.
When my wife was briefly hospitalized back in the early 80s, she had a resident named Dr. Bickell [sic] who, once we compared notes, turned out to be my fourth cousin once or twice removed. Unfortunately, circumstances kept us from really mapping things out (this was before e-mail and, I think, before my kinswoman who’s a genealogist was even born).
I recall a Nero Wolfe mystery (tho I don’t know which one) where a character saying that he and a woman in the case are (first) cousins mentions that they are cross-cousins. After he is caught for a murder, Wolfe’s explanation includes noting the suspect’s use of that term, which meant that he had been researching in the kinship literature of anthropologists and had latched into the point that in some cultures cross-cousins may marry though ortho-cousins cannot – showing that he had designs on that female cousin.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Yes, and selecting for “ugly genes” at that.
It would be offensive if a teacher really says that…
It took me a while to realize the joke is (supposed to be) the teacher thinks he’s inbred because he’s *stupid*, not because he’s ugly.
I don’t think a strip quite as painfully ugly as Close To Home should be making inbreeding jokes.
generations OF inbreeding?
@ Phil – I noticed that typo in the headline, too, but it’s not clear whether Bill copied and pasted it from B.A.’s submission, or retypoed the “on” by himself.
It was my error.
And even if it hadn’t been originally, copying somebody else’s error is also an error, so there was no way I get out of this unscathed.
I don’t know exactly what is wrong with the people in this strip, but it’s not inbreeding. If inbreeding did that, the royal families of europe would all look like that.
I also tend to assume royal families of Europe when I think of inbreeding, and the characters in Close to Home have the opposite of the Hapsburg chin.
My in-laws actually got asked how closely they were related at one point. But that was by a medical professional, and there are a number of close-ish marriages in their ethnic group (the doctor, of course, would have been even more used to seeing the closely related ones, as they would be that much more likely to show up with seizures or whatever.)
Howso “the opposite,” Christine?
Sheep, it’s actually possible the teacher said it figuring they wouldn’t understand what she meant.
When my wife was in elementary school, the teacher called a girl a meeskite, assuming she wouldn’t know it was Yiddish for ugly. The kid said “You’re not so pretty yourself.”
Some personal synchronicity:
I follow a Facebook group for people whose families summered in the Catskills (until the 1970s, an area in Central New York catering to Jewish families — having come into existence a century or so earlier because other resorts proudly posted signs saying they don’t cater to “dogs or Hebrews”).
People were discussing their first boy/girlfriends during those summers, one one woman said there was a boy she really liked, and they went into the woods to make out (whatever that actually meant in the early 60s), and when she got back her parents told her the boy was actually a distant cousin.
Somebody else in the group pointed out that the whole area was filled with Jewish families from New York City’s Outer Boroughs (everywhere but Manhattan), and ANY two random people there have a pretty good chance of being distant cousins.
Bill, I would describe the Close to Home chin as being very weak and round. I’m not sure what else would be the opposite of a prominent pointy chin.
Marrying a “distant cousin” is actually not uncommon. It’s just that most people have no clue who their third cousins are, let alone any further. I’ve never understood the “OMG, at least it’s by marriage” reaction when someone discovers that their fiancé(e) is a fourth or fifth cousins. I have never seen hard data, but I’m pretty sure that there is a high degree of overlap between cultures where people actually know their relatives out that far, and cultures where people are less concerned about marrying distant relatives.
It wasn’t until after Ronald Reagan appointed Donald Regan Secretary of the Treasury that they found out they were fifth cousins.
Ah. Sorry, Christine, I wasn’t thinking about the Hapsburg chin specifically.
Assuming I did my math right, if Reagan and Regan really were fifth cousins, that means they shared great^5 grandparents, which is to say, 2 out of 128 great^5 grandparents, which is to say 126 of their great^5 grandparents were NOT the same. They share ~.4% of their genes…
Christine: are you saying cultures that do know who their nth cousin is don’t care about marrying cousins, and cultures who don’t know who their third cousin is do care about not marrying cousins? That would be interesting…
My point was, larK, how easy it is not to know who your fifth cousins are.
(That said, Donald Regan seemed to have an odd lack of curiosity over whether he was related to a president named Reagan)
larK – I am saying that. Admittedly, I have a very small sample size. However, it also bears out logically. You have a shitload of fifth cousins. Marrying one isn’t that incredibly unlikely. So the reason we’re grossed out by it in generic American culture (i.e. people who don’t really have a particular strong ethnic identity) is that we don’t know it happens.
Cultures that are keeping track of family to that degree are probably also ones where people are more likely to marry within the culture (if only based on the fact that without the cultural reinforcement the practice will die out, so people who did a lot of marrying out are less likely to keep that up. But also being a small distinct cultural group will lead to an increased value in knowing who you are, and tracking family history.) This makes marrying one of the fifth cousins even more likely. It’s just not going to be sustainable if people go “ew, I can’t marry them, we’re related to .4%”.
As it happens, the wife of my first cousin once removed downward is a genealogist, so the number for relatives I can pin down borders on the insane. If you ever hear about lawsuits to force government agencies to release genealogical information, that’s probably her.
After all this (eminently justified) commentary about the extreme ugliness of the characters in “Close to Home”, I have to say that in this panel, McPherson seems to have exerted himself: the father is just as hideous as one would expect (particularly the eyes and beard), but the mother and especially the son are surprisingly acceptable (at least by “Close to Home” standards).
P.S. Does anyone have an idea what the six-legged creature between the rungs on the back of the chair is supposed to be? I sure hope that McPherson has not started to copy Piraro’s Easter eggs.
Here’s a good rule of thumb: if nobody at your wedding, when asked whether they’re part of the bride’s family or the groom’s family hesitates before answering, you’re probably okay.
P.S. Having abused my eyes by reviewing the “Close to Home” tag in the CIDU archive, the ugly truth is that McPherson started including that misbegotten creature in every panel sometime between June and November of last year (2018). It’s almost as bad as the squirrel, but thankfully the thing does not talk.
I not only know all of my third cousins – I know most of their other side cousins also. First cousins I know all of their other side cousins. Robert has no first cousins and is not sure if he has second cousins – beyond that would be too much for him to think about.
Having said that – early in our dating his paternal grandfather died. His parents and sister were in France at the time, so we went to the wake with his maternal grandparents (an amazing thing since when we got married a few years later his grandparents were still not talking to the other grandparent(s) from when his parents got married.
His assorted relatives not knowing his family was away all assumed I was his sister (who is 9 years younger than him). Not a family that sees each other a lot.
There are those who are confused about us – we walk through a park every day as we park our car there and walk to the Post Office to check our box. We pass the woman who works in the tennis court reservation booth and a man who works with her. After several years of walking 5 days a week we had started nodding at each other. Then saying hello. One day she stops us – “I am sorry, but I have to know. How are you related?” Yeah, we have started to look too much a like. Two short cubby people…
I’ve been mistaken for my sister-in-law a few times, which is hilarious, as she is this tiny petite blonde thing, and I’m average height, got a very solid build, and am fat on top of that, with dark hair. (Interestingly enough we can both wear the same colours, which helps.) I look a lot more like my husband than she does. It’s funny though, because there is a bit of a “look” for their ethnic group. Not that it’s super-strong, but it makes it funnier than I’d get lumped in for her. (Of course, I don’t look particularly French-Canadian either, and there was the time on the train that they were going down asking “coffee? Coffee? Coffee? Café?” with the French being when they got to me).
When we got married I assumed my husband’s name, so the best incident of me getting mistaken for his sister was when someone asked “Are you [name]s?”, and when we answered in the affirmative assumed I was the sister. She used to babysit them, which makes it even funnier. (I know a lot of kids have their hair darken, but mine was never blonde, and hers was so incredibly pale as a kid it’s funny that someone would think she could look like me, even aside from the size.)
And the good news is that the stories of the couple that still saw each other at family reunions after they were divorced are rare enough that they stand out for a reason. (The couple were at least second cousins, if not further, so it isn’t actually a close marriage.)
My friend who comes from a nearby smaller city where her family remained was in the habit for a long time of returning there for things like getting her hair done or visiting the dentist, at providers that were old favorites in the family. One time at the dentist, they had pulled up her sister-in-law’s records from a same-name situation like those above. (Of course after a moment of befuddlement it was straightened out pretty quickly, since nothing matched.)
When anyone asks either or both of us on hearing our (Robert’s) last name if we are related to…. We stop them at that point and say no. We are the only people left in the family with his last name. Unlike me who went to hyphenated name for legal purposes, but mostly just use his last name, his sister just changed her last name to her husband’s. There are some cousins of several degrees away from from him around on his dad’s side but they have the original family name. Only descendants of his paternal grandfather have our last name. His dad had one sister, who had no children, and died some years ago. He has the one sister. So it is just us.
Where did our last name come from? His grandfather had the original Italian version ending in “zini”. His first name was Giovanni Battista (John the Baptist). He joined the US cavalry around the time of WWI and was sent to Mexico with General Pershing chasing down Pancho Villa.
He was offered US Citizenship for his service and his name was changed at that time to James (anglicized version of the last name). I have never understood why his name was not just changed to John instead of James.
So the two of us are it for the last name in the family.
When my wife was briefly hospitalized back in the early 80s, she had a resident named Dr. Bickell [sic] who, once we compared notes, turned out to be my fourth cousin once or twice removed. Unfortunately, circumstances kept us from really mapping things out (this was before e-mail and, I think, before my kinswoman who’s a genealogist was even born).
I recall a Nero Wolfe mystery (tho I don’t know which one) where a character saying that he and a woman in the case are (first) cousins mentions that they are cross-cousins. After he is caught for a murder, Wolfe’s explanation includes noting the suspect’s use of that term, which meant that he had been researching in the kinship literature of anthropologists and had latched into the point that in some cultures cross-cousins may marry though ortho-cousins cannot – showing that he had designs on that female cousin.
Some Wikipedia information (usual caveats):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_and_cross_cousins