photo credit: ZachSB
Candidate brushes off incident.
photo credit: ZachSB
EPUBLICAN presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney's supposed prayer tucked into Jerusalem’s holy Western Wall turned out to be nothing more than a Post-it note folded around a piece of chewing gum, according to a local rabbi.
Rabbi Isaac Ginsburg said he felt "compelled" to pull out the ostensible Romney prayer "because something didn't look right about the whole thing," he said.
"Mr. Romney appeared to be pulling something out of his mouth, just as he was folding up his prayer paper," the rabbi explained, "and then he quickly turned his back on his guests and I saw him fiddling around. When he turned back around, he said 'OK, I'm ready to go!' which struck me as a very unprayerful thing to say," continued the rabbi. "I've seen enough guilty faces of little boys in synagogue to know when something's up."
After Romney's departure from the Western Wall, Rabbi Ginsburg located the prayer paper, which he said "was actually a day-glow orange Post-it note, so it wasn't hard to spot."
Upon pulling out the paper, "I felt a little bump in the middle, so I wondered if Mr. Romney had folded in a little personal keepsake," said the rabbi. "I don't mind telling you I felt a little ashamed at that point," he said.
"But then I pulled the paper apart, and there was a fresh wad of chewing gum, still soft and gooey," the rabbi said.
A reporter on Romney's flight back to the U. S. asked the candidate for some gum, prompting Mr. Romney to pull out a pack of Trident Cinnamon and offer a piece.
The reporter accepted and then asked Mr. Romney, "Is this the same brand of gum you stuck in the Jerusalem prayer wall, sir?" Romney blushed but did not attempt a cover story.
Instead the candidate flashed one of his trademark grins and said, "Hey, now, I didn't say anything bad about Israel, did I? Did I say they might not be ready for the Second Coming? Although that Wailing Wall is a bit of a mess, with all that paper stuck in there. I might expand on my excellent job-creation record and hire some folks to run a Hoover across it now and then, but that's just a friendly suggestion, not a criticism," Romney said while popping a fresh piece of Trident into his mouth.
Trident chewing gum immediately issued a statement that read, in part, "We at Trident do not condone the placing of our flavorful, long-lasting chewing gum into Jerusalem's holy Western Wall or indeed into, on, or under any religious artifact of any size or denomination."
Romney promised he would not place his chewed gum inappropriately in the future, "including under Obama's debate podium, where his fingers go."
© 7.31.12 Kate Heidel
