Christian Salt

By now you've probably seen this story.

Seems this guy, a retiree who apparently watches lots of Food Network shows, heard about as much as he could take about this here "Kosher salt" business, and decided (finally!) to put out salt for his fellow believers in Christ.  After all, if there's this special salt for Jews, why not for his people, right?  So he got an Episcopal priest to bless some salt, which he (the retiree, not the priest) is now selling with fancy packaging.  Or trying to sell, I guess.

The reaction to this seems pretty generally: the guy's a dummy, haw haw, aren't redneck Christians funny?  Because as anyone with a smattering of salt knowledge (or a connection to teh interwebs, or a "dictionary," plus a passing interest in lernin') can tell you, "Kosher salt" is not, you know, "kosher" as in blessed by a rabbi, as in OK for practicing Jews to eat.  Salt is kosher pretty much no matter what (unless it's been scraped off a curing Parma ham, probably).  The name comes from the fact that this type of salt, which has larger, more solid crystals than the kind you shake on your fries, is often used for preserving meat (the salt draws out moisture, including blood, allowing the meat to resist spoiling).  Drawing out blood from  butchered meat is required by Jewish dietary law, hence this kind of salt is used for "koshering."  It's grains are bigger and stick to the meat better than table salt.  But it's not like some special salt made only for Jews that well-adjusted Christians should feel neglected about.

So, OK, it's obviously dumb to think that "Kosher salt" is a special treat for Jews that warrants a Christian version.

But I wonder what else we can learn from this.

Perhaps the lesson is that retirees from western Maryland can be ignorant.   Or rather, perhaps it's that we snarkers should be selling stuff to Christians who have more Bibles handy than dictionaries.  You know those little vibrating metal doodads they call "Jew's harps?"  The things you put in your mouth and twang to make hillbilly-comedy movie noises?  Maybe there's a market for "Blessed Christians' Harps."  Maybe that's the one great idea some of us have been looking for to retire off of - like Navin Johnson's eyeglass wipers.  Or maybe Streit's Maztos could make money repackaging their wafers as "Blessed Christian Wandering In The Desert Crackers?"  (Guys: if you do, I want a cut.)

This doesn't have to take the form of suckering the rubes and laughing at them as we take their ignorance money.  Maybe Blessed Christian Salt signals the yellow brick road out of the current economic gloom - clever identity marketing of necessary goods.

Any Wharton grads who once fantasized about writing for The Simpsons feel free to give me a holler.