Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 18, 2012

SusanSunshine said, about 19 hours agoEww… yes, Jeff’s half-sister is Alex’s mother…dunno whether you have to bother saying “Half-uncle” cos you use the word "Uncle for even the non-blood-related husband of your aunt…but whatever, it’s closer than first cousins…. waaaay too close for comfort.

In fact I remember Jeff explaining their relationship to Zipper years ago, when either they visited Alex at MIT, or she and Drew visited Walden…and Zipper asked why Jeff didn’t hit on Alex.Hope he hasn’t forgotten!HE HAS FORGOTTEN AND IT’S REALLY CREEPY! He has also forgotten how Leo got that eye patch. His delusions are becoming more serious.

A moment of reluctant reality in that last panel.

Pikes Peak ? Leo and Alex are hitting new heights ! With this heat and drought, I hope they have plenty of water and the vehicle didn’t overheat on the way up.

Before the 20th century Eastern European and possibly Middle Eastern Jewish men often married their nieces. I have a distant cousin in Argentina whose ancestors were an uncle-niece marriage before they left Galicia. It was forbidden for an aunt to marry her nephew, but if you read Exodus, you will see that’s exactly what happened with Moses’ parents.

I really doubt that, Jeff!

Ewww! And thanks LWP — with your help, I didn’t have to repeat any of it!

I’ll just repeat this part: Ewww!

And BTW — yes, engaging with trolls only makes them … um… trollier.

Not getting it. Jeff’s MOM is Alex’s GRANDMA. No? What am I missing? And that makes him what to Alex? (Apart from irrelevant.)

Right, JJ would be his half-sister… That’s so weird.

Just to get it straight, JJ is the daughter of Joanie and her first husband Clinton Caucus. She later married Rick and Jeff is their son. JJ married Mike and Alex is their daughter; they then divorced and Mike married Kim. Bit of help from Wikipedia, but mostly the wonderful 30 years book (unsolicited plug…)

As usual, Jeff can’t distinguish fantasy from reality, or the babe-, strike that, geek-magnetism of his own imagined heroics from the quiet appeal of a decent, honest grunt.

When I say ‘she married’ in the second sentence above, I mean Joanie… Perhaps not as easy to get straight as I thought…

When biting your tongue is hard, just repeat to yourself “I saved a billy-goat’s life today. i saved a billy-goat’s life today. I saved…”

Jeff — EWWW! — she’s your niece!

Bill Weinburg — right…. just think about it….if YOUR Mom is somebody’s grandmother, you’re that somebody’s UNCLE, right?

(That is, unless you’re the only “Aunt Bill" I’ve ever heard of… but I make no assumptions on these here internets.)

And if your mother had any children with a man other than your own father, to those children, you’d have the same relationship Jeff has to Alex…by modern standards, NOT in the same dating pool… PLEASE!

I don’t care who biblical figures married, or ancient Sumerians or … 16th century European royal families… we know more about genetics now, and also have a few zillion years of social taboos built up since then…probably as a result of seeing the products of those unions.

Her mother is his (half) sister. Jeff is Alex’s uncle. Ick.

@SUSAN SUNSHINE: The ban on incest throughout history was not because of the of bad genetic effect on inbreeding but because of the affect marrying one’s sibling, etc. would have on how one would relate to one’s relatives. For example, if siblings married, can you imagine the complexity of having your own parents as your in-laws?

Here in Eastern NC it is like the old joke. When you introduce your wife and cousin you are making only one introduction. When I married, I found out that 90% of the people on my block were related. Also, most people I know over 60, are great-grand-parents.

Jeff needs to get out more.

As recently as 1812, there was an uncle-niece marriage among the Stuart pretenders, which led to a division within the Jacobite cause, because, although the RC Church had allowed the marriage, an English law specifically disallowed it.

Instinctively, ancient civilizations created taboos against incest without knowing anything about DNA or genetics. I believe there is in all animals, including humans, an innate desire to propagate the species in such a way, as to increase survival. Inbreeding is counter-productive to this aim. We know know more about recessive genes and chromosomes than ever before. But we only have to look back in history to the House of Bourbon to see the proofs of the foolishness of inbreeding.

I didn’t know these guys were ever actually interested in girls.As for inbreeding, even plants know they have to come up with ways to distribute their seeds widely. The royals managed to spread hemophilia and imbecility widely – oh, hi, Sarge, didn’t see you there ;).

I was at Pikes Peak yesterday, 7/17. Didn’t see them there.

I get this strip in my newspaper, but picked it up today on Go-Comics so that I could check the comment section. It seemed to me that Jeff would be JJ’s (half) uncle, so I was curious why he’d be thinking of her in that way (besides, you get the impression she’d be more nerdy-smart than hot, so wouldn’t Jeff be more likely to hit on her friend Drew?).Where are you going with this, Garry T? Is Jeffy heading for a major fall (please please please!)? If so, can he take Roland Hedley down with him? Both of those guys are (as my grandfather would have said) “deep as a puddle o’ spit.”

I was wondering, if Leo was driving, what was his time to the top?? As to “genetics”, Cain went to the land of Nod, now where did THEY come from, and have kids, like Adam and Eve, the “first and only” couple?

Susan Sunshine – I knew a situation where both parents had a sister named – well, let’s say “Mary” because that wasn’t the name. Mom’s sister was called “Aunt Mary” and Dad’s sister “Uncle Mary.”

Once again… eeww! He is her UNCLE!

Blue-blood East Coasters do it differently…?

David Stanford here, Duty Officer for Doonesbury.com. Many readers have written in today to inquire whether GBT forgot that Alex is Jeff’s niece. GBT says he hadn’t, but he did inadvertently mix up the two boys during the course of the week. While Jeff is threatened by Leo’s warrior bone fides, it’s Zipper who’s had the crush on Alex. Apologies to the many horrified, genealogically astute readers who noticed.

First you create the lie and then you create “the evidence” to back up the lie. People who want to believe the lie will always will do so. There Holocaust deniers, and no amount of evidence will change their beliefs. There are people who believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old and no amount of science will change that. Heck, there are people who still believe the Earth is flat.Do not waste your time or energy arguing with such people. Your time and intelligence can be used in a more productive endeavor.

Probably not the nicest place to be just yet, with the recent, and still smoldering, Waldo fire. I am sure the Peak and surrounding areas still smell of burned forest.

Jeff should ask Zipper to photoshop him and Drew together.

Um, yeah, as opposed to her hsuband, who really did serve his country. (Jeff reminds me of the Russell Crowe character in “A Beautiful Mind.”)

Early man had reasoning skills equal to our own.…………………………….Maybe even better.

I’ll leave the preposterousness to you and your excuses for a White House that has created documents and thus committed felonies.

I’ll also let you be the racist. This is entirely about the US Constittution and laws that have been broken.Something you use your racism to cover up!……………………………….Now, now boys, don’t fight!

Thank you, Aide de Sherpa, for the explanation… I wonder how GBT will address this in the strip, if at all. Reversed dialogue makes sense…

1-The present royal family, of Great Britain, changed their name from Saxe-Coburg to Windsor because of WW I. They are really German.

2-Intermarriage of royal families, in Europe, is why most royals are considered idiots.

@Linguist

Interestingly enough, I recall reading a study done on siblings seperated at birth and adopted vs. adoptive households, and what reserachers found was that the key element was you don’t think romantically of those you’ve seen your “mother” raise. .There is a genetic factor inso far as females perfer the smell of males with the immunities most different from them when fertile, but most like them when pregnant (or taking the pill which simulates the hormones of pregnacy…)..BUT using birth records from Sweden it was shown that cousin (1st to 3rd degree) relationships of those who are Rh- had more offspring surviving to adulthood than those Rh+ or more distantly related.

I think Alex prefers men with brains.

They scream and squeal even louder when confronted. They keep repeating the same lies. That is all they have. They literally thrive on the confrontation, because what they want more than anything else is attention.

The issue isn’t their relayionship (or lack there of), its Jeff’s obession for things he can’t have… Always the unattainable

I thought Jeff got over his cluelessness that he and Alex are family, otherwise he’d know that it would be incest (half-incest?). Oh, wait, that’s right, cluelessness is his middle name.