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Old 14 Sep 2006, 01:08 am
pt_tom pt_tom is offline
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It also clears up the question of whether people post things without checking it out.....

Origins: This amusing bit of political humor first hit our inbox in August 2006, positing a connection between July 1947 events in Roswell, New Mexico (i.e., the alleged recovery of an alien spacecraft and its occupants) and the birth nine months later of several currently prominent Democrats.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious by deconstructing humor, we'll point out that the basic premise of the joke doesn't ring true. First of all, the normal human gestation period is about 38 weeks, so children conceived on or shortly after the date of the Roswell incident (8 July 1947) would most likely have been born (assuming ordinary, full-term pregnancies) in April 1948, not March. Secondly, only one of the political figures named was born even approximately nine months after the events as Roswell.

Five of the figures listed were born well before March 1948:

* Dianne Feinstein (U.S. Senator, California): 22 June 1933
* Nancy Pelosi (U.S. Representative, California): 26 March 1940
* Barbara Boxer (U.S. Senator, California): 11 November 1940
* John Kerry (U.S. Senator, Massachusetts): 11 December 1943
* Bill Clinton (former U.S. President): 19 August 1946

Two more of the persons identified were born considerably later than nine months after Roswell:

* Howard Dean (former Governor of Vermont): 17 November 1948

* Charles E. Schumer (U.S. Senator, New York): 23 November 1950

Hillary Rodham Clinton (U.S. Senator, New York) was born on 26 October 1947, a mere three months after the Roswell incident.

Only Al Gore, Jr. (former U.S. Vice-President), who was born on 31 March 1948, came into the world at a time that reasonably fits into the framework of this humorous premise. Quite possibly this item started out as a joke specifically about him, and others later expanded it into a joke about Democrats in general.

Last updated: 8 September 2006

Source http://www.snopes.com/politics/humor/roswell.asp
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