Jew Jokes? Oh Yeah! We Got Jew Jokes!

Fuck yeah we do, thanks to John “Funnyman” Whitbeck, 10th Congressional District Republican Committee chairman, appearing nitely at the Plantation Club in Confederateburg, Va. Johnnie’s latest gutbuster, shown above, involves the “head of the Jewish faith” presenting the new pope with the bill for the last supper. Funny, John, funny! You’re a funny man! But apparently Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli II, introduced by Whitbeck at a campaign rally in Sterling, Va., didn’t appreciate the gag.

John is, apparently, no relation to H. Wallace “Wally” Hudson, chair of the Mecklenburg, Va., Republican Committee, who, back in 2012, reluctantly took down a picture on the committee’s Facebook page portraying President Obama as a witch doctor.

So, yes, this is how Virginia Republicans behave in public.

Afterwords
In his write up of the event, Washington Post reporter Frederick Kunkle says the crowd “laughed uproariously,” which scarcely strikes me as le mot juste. I’d say, “chuckled appreciatively.” I mean, it wasn’t that funny.

Update
If you want to get depressed, scroll down through the comments attached to Dave Weigel’s item on l’affaire Whitbeck. I know that looking through any comment tail, especially one involving, you know, Jews, is like rolling over a rock, but still, speaking as a lapsed Episcopalian, I was surprised and horrified by the number of people who insisted that they couldn’t possibly imagine why anyone—anyone—could find this joke offensive or, perish the thought, anti-Semitic. Going out on a limb as a lapsed Episcopalian, martini jug securely in hand, I will offer the following tentative conclusions:

1. By and large, Jews do not like jokes that involve both Jews and Jesus. Keep the two apart.

2. By and large, Jews do not like jokes that exhibit a massive ignorance of Judaism. There is no “chief rabbi,” no Jewish Pope. Get over it.

3. By and large, Jews do not like jokes that imply that Jews are avaricious. In this case, the “joke” is that Jesus stiffed them for the bill for the Last Supper and they’ve been trying to collect for the past two thousand years. If you want to take this joke to its logical, unpalatable conclusion, the Jews crucified Jesus, and now they want Christians to pay up for his last meal!

The obvious rule, which, unfortunately, few people can keep straight, is not to make fun of someone else’s religion. You’ll always get it wrong. About ten years ago I was at a midnight Christmas service in an Episcopalian Church in Virginia. The minister was attempting to do Mary and Joseph with Lower East Side accents. Fortunately, there were no Jews around, because, even as a lapsed Episcopalian with an empty martini jug, I found it so not funny.