J Street blogger panel full, chaotic, fun

Our decidedly “off-Broadway” blogger’s panel took place at noon today, tucked into something slightly larger than a broom closet in the bowels of J Street’s conference hotel.

There were about ten of us on the panel and three additional panelists participating remotely, via the craziest kind of phone/Skype connections. Audience people (who also included some really cool people like Australian-Jewish blogger Antony Lowenstein) were literally pasted to the walls and would have hung from rafters had there been rafters.

At one point J Street head Jeremy Ben-Ami put in a small cameo appearance at the back of the audience. I believe he was not there when blogging superstars like Phil Weiss and Max Blumenthal were deciding whether to give J Street one thumb’s-up, one and a half, or two…

Anyway, bottom line, the panel was an independent activity. J Street did not endorse the views expressed there, and we weren’t obliged to line up like clockwork behind all of J Street’s positions, either. But all in all, huge kudos to J Street for embracing the idea of a free-speech forum like this.

From my perspective, it was just an amazing opportunity, to be able to meet people like Phil Weiss, Richard Silverstein, Max B., Jerry Haber, etc, in person for the first time.

More later, if I can escape again from administrative challenges here at CNI…