John whitbeck joke

Democrats are putting a spotlight on what they say was an anti-Semitic joke made by a Ken Cuccinelli supporter who was warming up the crowd before the Republican Gubernatorial candidate arrived at a Sterling rally Tuesday. Tenth Congressional District Republican Party Chairman John Whitbeck told the waiting crowd that he is a Catholic and then proceeded to tell a joke about "the head of the Jewish faith" presenting the new Pope with a bill for the Last Supper. A Democratic tracker videotaped the event and Whitbeck's joke was posted on YouTube. The Cuccinelli campaign distanced itself from Whitbeck's comments.

This is almost a week old, but someone posted it to Facebook today. The joke is one on which a representative of the Jewish people presents the new pope with a bill for the last supper, something—according to the joke—that representatives of the Jewish people have been trying to do for centuries. The video speaks for itself, especially in the enthusiastic response the joke gets:. According to Whitbeck, no one should be offended by the joke because he heard it at church. I told a joke I heard from a priest at a church service.

JTA — In , Sen. George Allen R-Va. Living in the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia, I was rattled — okay, maybe bemused — by this sequence. It was like discovering a rat at Disneyland. Virginia, at least where I sit, is a state with a burgeoning and unabashed Jewish population.

Whitbeck, the Republican leader in Virginia's 10th Congressional District, called himself a Catholic and began to tell a joke in which the "head of the Jewish faith" hands a "ceremonial piece of paper" to the pope. Chris La Civitia, a campaign strategist for Cuccinelli, tried to distance the tea party favorite from the joke, telling The Washington Post he didn't know who Whitbeck was. He's gained the support of influential Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio R-Fla. In May, Cuccinelli told voters that he doesn't "think government should be doing anything about birth control.