INAUGURATION

INAUGURATION

 

     As I sit here listening to President Barack Hussein Obama's inaugural address, my mind goes back to something that happened more than 20 years ago.

     I had volunteered to help the Otter Valley Union High School debating team, where I had learned most of the skills that would enable me, in a few years, to become a newspaper reporter. The team was taking part in one of the county's most prestigious tournaments, at the Bronx High School of Science. The elite magnet school had had several of the country's top teams, and the tournament had attracted others. By doing Otter Valley's share of the judging, I would enable the coach, David Gale, to hear how his teams were doing against top competition and challenging cases.

     But during the first speech of the first debate, I realized how profoundly debating had changed since I had been on the team. Rather than emphasizing research, analysis of evidence, argumentation and  refutation, the contest seemed to be which side could spew out, at the highest possible speed, the greatest number of sketchy arguments, in the hope that the opposition would omit answering one or more of them, at which point the proponents of the argument would claim for it astonishing implications.

     This I would learn as the tournament went on. My immediate problem was, the first affirmative speaker had spoken so fast that I could not understand her. Not one word. It was, as George Orwell's dictatorial government in 1984 put it, doubleplusgoodduckspeak.

     I announced that I was not capable of serving as judge for that reason, and left to find the tournament director. He said to go back: what the team had done, they would have to live with, as I saw the debate.

     The next speaker, however, was a young black man who organized the first speaker's scattershot thoughts, clarified them, then systematically refuted them. I gave him a perfect score.

     I have often wondering what became of that brilliant young man. Today, with the Washington mall more packed with people than it was in 1967, when I joined others in protesting the Vietnam War there, I no longer wonder. In effect, he is speaking as I write.