First touch on debate

I don't know what it is about the rain in Columbus, but it always ends up slowing traffic to a crawl. With a severe thunderstorm overhead, I barely made it to pick up the baby at day care by 6pm. Had to go home first, then drive up to Westerville. Through an extended tornado-warning- producing supercell.

We were late, and I missed the beginning. I'm still sorting out my overall impressions. Everything kind of got overwhelmed near the end when an audience member used his question-time to accuse Goodman of referring to Arabs as "scum," a charge that he denied repeatedly during a very loud exchange. As soon as this had settled down, an activist from 'Justice For Kids' confronted Goodman about blowing them, and their concerns about an incident at West High School in February, off.

Goodman's responses to these accusations, beyond simply denying them, were somewhat contradictory and bizarre, including telling the Arab-American upset over the alleged slurs that "I've been the victim of racism many times myself," apparently referring to anti-Semitism. I'm not trying to split hairs, and discrimination against Jews is still more prevalent and ugly than a lot of folks realize, but Jewish or not, white-skinned people claiming to be victims of racism look bizarre when they do so.

Tomorrow, I'll blog what I can about the issues and delivery. Tonight, the whole image of David Goodman playing the role of guest on a Springer episode is about what I can handle.