Brad Pitt’s Mom Writes Anti-Obama Screed to Local Newspaper
It looks like Doug Pitt isn’t the only member of Brad’s family getting some extra press this week.
On Tuesday, an anti-Obama letter signed by Jane Pitt, the mother of the Hollywood star, appeared in the pages of the Springfield, Missouri News Reader in response to an article about Christians reluctant to vote for Mitt Romney as President.
The letter reads, in part:
Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for Romney’s opponent, Barack Hussein Obama — a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.
The News-Leader later cleared up any confusion of the identity of the author by confirming the letter writer as “the mother of actor Brad Pitt and local businessman Doug Pitt.”
Her stance could not be further from that of her son, who is one of Hollywood’s most vocal supporters of same-sex marriage. In 2008 Pitt donated $100,000 to help fight Proposition 8, the ballot proposition to repeal same-sex marriage in California. At the time, it was the largest donation to the campaign from an A-List celebrity.
He explained to the Los Angles Times that, “no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn’t harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8.”
Pitt and actress Angelina Jolie, his partner of seven years, with whom he has six children, had also famously vowed not to marry each other until same-sex couples also shared that right.
(The couple announced their engagement in April, however, and although they have yet to set a date, Pitt told The Hollywood Reporter that he didn’t “think we’ll be able to hold out” until gay marriage is universal.)
Pitt is also a big fan of the president — even more so than his fiancée.
At the premiere of her film The Land of Milk and Honey at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., Jolie said of the current administration, “there are many, many things that have gone in a wonderful direction and there are a few things I’m disappointed in.”
When asked if he was an Obama supporter at the same premiere, Pitt answered, “I have been and remain so.”
Interestingly, Pitt shares more than a political affinity with the President; they also share an ancestor, Edwin Hickman, making them ninth cousins.
Ninth cousins Obama and Pitt: that family tree in full
When Mr Pitt went to Washington last week the official line was that Brad was there to talk to Obama about the Hollywood star's plan to help rebuild New Orleans.
All very worthy. But who were they trying to kid?
It was obvious to any rightwing conspiracy theorist that the meeting was all part of a plot to forward the interests of Obama's family. Surely you haven't forgotten? Obama and Pitt are cousins.
Ninth cousins to be precise. On the campaign trail last year it emerged that the two share a common ancestor.
The link is Edwin Hickman, who died in Virginia in 1769. Obama is a direct descendant of Hickman's son James through the president's white Kansas-born mother, Ann Dunham Sutoro.
Hickman's other son, Edwin Jr, James's brother, is head of the line leading to William Bradley Pitt, known these days as Brad.
We don't know much about Hickman, but what there is points more towards Obama's life of public service than Pitt's calling as an entertainer. Hickman was sheriff of the wonderfully named Spotsylvania region of Virginia, and owned a little land. A big fish in a tiny pond, he could not have dreamed of his double whammy 10 generations later.
Christopher Child, a genealogist at the New England Historic Genealogical Society, who did much of the work on Obama's family tree, finds these coincidences interesting, though not surprising. "If people have ancestors in a common part of the country they will be more likely to find connections - in Obama and Pitt's case the South."
So are the similarities evident? Not at, erm, face value. Pitt's jaw is broad, Obama's sharp. But they share a nose and an irresistible smile. The charm is in the genes.
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Sources: AP, AZCentral, CNN, Guardian.co.uk, The Young Turks, TIME, Youtube, Google Maps
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