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  • 2000-10-15 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Joe Biden Have a Horse Thief Ancestor? (en)
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  • What are the odds that two prominent Democrats would both have distant relatives with funny names who were hanged for train robbery and horse stealing? Not as long as you might think, apparently, because the same day in 2000 we received the example quoted above, we also received the following version: This item is merely a very old bit of humor (dressed up with an accompanying photograph of train-robbing outlaw Tom Black Jack Ketchum) which has been adapted into a one-size-fits-all political jibe — all one need do is simply alter the text by changing the surname to match that of the disfavored politician du jour, then send it winging around the Internet yet again. In May 2001, for example, another version featured George W. Bush: In December 2008 a version aimed at a Canadian politician appeared online: Shortly after Republican senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was convicted in October 2008 on seven felony counts of violating federal ethics laws, this joke was updated again in versions that featured both his name and that of Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid: In 2009 this joke was circulated in a version that featured Vice President Joe Biden doing his own genealogical research: The jape was still going strong in 2017, with a version circulating on Facebook about then-U.S. President Donald Trump: Predictably, another Joe Biden variation turned up on Facebook during the first year of Biden's presidency, 2021: (en)
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