Seder on Seder

I have a friend who keeps telling me the path for John Kasich to get the GOP nomination for president.  I usually listen for a while and then finally interrupt and say, "John Kasich is not getting the GOP nomination.  You do understand that, don't you?  The Republican Party is not going to hand over the nomination to a guy who's only won one primary and only has about 15% support.  You know that, right?"  He usually reluctantly says, "Uh...okay, yes.  But I'm just saying it's his one path."

This reminds me of the great Peter Cook sketch where he plays E.L. Wisty, a crusty, whimsical coot who sits on a park bench and waxes philosophically about all manner of subjects.  My favorite is when he says that "It's a remarkable thought to realize that if 8,437,351 people died tomorrow...I would be King of England."

So, John Kasich is not going to be the GOP nominee for president, whatever the one path is.  But he's still out there campaigning and raising money.  Which brought this to mind.

The other day, when on his campaign trail in New York, I saw footage of John Kasich in the middle of the devout Jewish district in Brooklyn, talking with a group of ultra-Orthodox Hassidic Jews, and explaining to them how fascinating the importance of Passover was. 

"The great link between the blood that was put above the lamp posts,” he said.  "The blood of the lamb, because Jesus Christ is known as the lamb of God.  It's His blood, we believe."

Forgetting for a moment that, no, the blood was not put on "lamp posts," but the home doors, something it's probably good to be accurate about when lecturing Hassdic Jews in their own neighborhood, and while we're at it, forget too for the sake of argument that Passover occurred 1,300 years before the birth of Christ, so there's a pretty good chance it's not "His" blood, but more to the point was that it's probably even a far worse idea to start comparing Passover to Jesus Christ when talking to Hassidic Jews -- or any Jew -- at any time, but most especially right before a major religious holiday.

The thing is, I thought that was the end of the mind-numbing story of John Kassic Meets the Jews.  But no, it turns out that there's a lot more footage of his Big Day.  And on his radio show, The Majority Report, host Sam Seder does a hilarious 13-minute takedown of it, interspersing his commentary with footage of Kasich trying to teach Talmudic scholars (I don't mean that metaphorically, but literal Talmudic scholars) about the lessons of the Bible -- and then stopping the video to put what you just heard in proper perspective, before continuing on to the next moment at Kasich Bible College.  

Seder's utter disbelief at the arrogant stupidity of this is a joy to behold.  As he puts it, these are men Kasich is lecturing about the Bible who do nothing but study the commentary of the commentary of the commentary of the commentary of the Talmud for 8-10 hours a day, every single day...for their entire lives.  And no, Jews don't refer to it as the "Old Bible" (as Kasich here does), but rather...the Bible.

Anyway, given that tonight is the seder, for the first night of Passover, I thought it was as good a time as any to have a bit of Seder.  He doesn't gets into the footage until about four minutes it, but it's all a joy.