Hey Larry,

what's the status of that exculpatory evidence you were so excited about a couple days ago? It seems to me that (as Blues and others have noted) the issue of whether and why Ms Toogood slapped the bejeezis out of her kid is taking second place to advocacy on behalf of the Traveller community. Hey, I credit travellers with keeping musical traditions (remember them?) alive and well, with bearing cultural riches and social burdens out of proportion to their small numbers. But I STILL think Togood deserves much of the scrutiny she's received.

I want to be clear again: I do not deny that anti-Traveller discrimination exists. BUT, showing that there is any such discrimination in this case is hard, at least until a final decision is reached concerning placement of the child. We are jumping the gun if we assume the courts will reach a bad decision because Toogood is a Traveller. So far they have done precisely the same thing they would do to me if I were on that tape slapping Martha.

There has been a lot of illogical talk suggesting that any scrutiny of Toogood amounts to discrimination. One of the great illogical moments of part II, for example, came when someone complained that they were only looking at Togood because they KNEW she was a traveller. I countered: did Kohl's really know she was a traveller? What's the evidence for that? My interlocutor responded: well, they prosecuted her for shoplifting before, they must know her ethnic group.

SO...how do you know they weren't looking at her because they prosecuted her before for shoplifting? Do we expect them NOT to be suspicious of people they have previously prosecuted for shoplifting? Where is there any evidence that her ethnicity ever entered into this case at all?

Aine: your links to Traveller articles, both positive and negative, are wonderful. But all the media babble about Irish Travellers doesn't prove that Toogood's ethnicity affected the CASE at all, only the media's coverage of the case.