Politics

And now: Gumgate?

Bob CollinsBob Collins Sep 22, 2017
45

The insulting moment when Minneapolis City Council member Lisa Goodman handed her opponent her chewing gum has now been documented nationally. You must be so proud, Minneapolis.

The Associated Press story is appearing in the nation’s newspapers — the New York Times, for example — and now the nation must think this is as Minnesotan as grape salad.

And maybe it is for Lisa Goodman because how else would one look so entirely comfortable removing chewing gum from one’s mouth and have the nerve to hand it to someone else, in this case challenger Teqen Zea-Aida ?

The moment was captured by The Wedge Live.

As so clearly wrong as Goodman was, equally outrageous is the number of people who just can’t seem to decide whether it was offensive.

It’s a chewed piece of chewing gum, people! In her mouth!

This happened Tuesday at the Ward 7 Affordable Housing Forum.

Zéa-Aida wrote on Facebook that he thought he had bad breath when Goodman offered him some gum.

She is a master of nasty politics for sure! I now know what she is capable of first hand, and why she must go. I will not be fooled again.

In what is said to be an apology, Goodman said on Facebook that she’s sorry if her opponent “felt I disrespected him.”

“It was an attempt at humor,” she said, adding she’s sorry if it wasn’t viewed that way.

She said Zéa-Aida “looked at me like I was crazy.”

“He misunderstood what I said, I misunderstood him putting his hand out, I put the gum in his hand and then he looked at me like I was crazy and I took it back out of his hand,” Goodman later told the Star Tribune. “It was a simple attempt at humor that I am profoundly sorry for.”