Interesting consequences
Apropos of what was discussed earlier in regard to Warren Kinsella, it now appears that there may have been some very drastic consequences indeed to Mr. Kinsella’s waging of a war of vendetta against Kathy Shaidle that began as a campaign against her appearance on TVO’s The Agenda, but which morphed in only a short span of time into a war against the show itself and its host, Steve Paikin.
Kinsella’s pursuit of the matter took on some odd aspects, such as this post (not a direct link) in which he expounded upon the sudden uptick in the number of Facebook friend requests he’d been receiving. Which was…just weird to read, really.
Anyhow, it now appears that some unfortunate outcomes have begun to emerge, not the least of which is that the Canadian Jewish Congress has “fired” Mr. Kinsella from his post on their legal affairs committee, inasmuch as a group can fire a volunteer.
Whether there is a direct connection between this break and events surrounding The Agenda and the Shaidle is not known, and is in fact covered under a non-disclosure agreement at present. The timing is certainly suspect, however.
A number of bloggers, though, note that it’s not so much the dismissal from the CJC that is the real consequence here, nor the real tragedy. As Ezra Levant notes, in offering a prayer (of sorts) for Warren Kinsella:
… part of me is glad to see someone who tries so hard to bully and blackball others, have his own stratagems backfire on him. But, to be very frank, I’m not that gleeful — I actually feel sad for him. I’m not saying that condescendingly — it really is sad to see a man with so much energy and talent get so consumed with personal vendettas and petty squabbles that it starts to cost him in his professional and public life.
I’m not going soft on Kinsella – his lawsuit against me is absurd, and if taken at face value, he means to bankrupt me. He’s a bully, and a fountain of foul-mouthed defamation in his own right. But there comes a point when someone — even someone who swears he’ll destroy you — is so self-destructive, and so blind to that self-destruction, that you feel a pang of sorrow for them.
I join Ezra in offering up a prayer for Warren Kinsella. I pray that next time he goes to Catholic Church that the Holy Spirit will make the liturgy come alive and he will know that Christ truly is present in the bread and the wine. I hope that some piece of Scripture that he’s heard all his life will suddenly speak so profoundly and deeply to his soul that he will experience the joy of repentance, because he has truly encountered his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I pray that he will experience all the fruits of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness and self-control. I pray for his family, for his wife, his children, that peace and joy will reign in their home, that their hearth will be one where God’s blessings, spiritual and natural, flow.
And I think I’d like to add my own note to that. Bear in mind, good reader, that I really don’t know Mr. Kinsella from Adam, so to speak, nor do I bear any particular grudge against him. But in his actions, I see shades of an event in my own life that I once went through, which cost me dearly and nearly cost me more than I could bear to lose. Love — from God and from the woman who became my wife — pulled me out of that spiral, for which I am grateful. And because of that, it pains me dearly to see someone else, even someone much older than me, go through the same sort of ugly transformation.
So in echoing what Deb said, above, I hope and pray that in the intervention of the Spirit, both directly and through the agency of his friends and family, the Lord is able to pull Warren Kinsella out of the spiral into which it now appears he has entered, before he has shredded himself down to his very soul, and burned every bridge over which he might one day again wish to cross. And since he is Catholic, I pray that he turns in this time of strife to the Church and the sacramental Reconciliation she offers, to set his soul again upon the right course, before he undoes all of who he is.
Which would naturally mean, as Jay Currie notes, making apologies to those who in the past he has falsely accused, withdrawing the frivolous lawsuits he has filed against those he has marked as enemies, and using his considerable talents in service of the cause of freedom of expression rather than acting against same.
But those things must come in due time, and only after the healing of soul and mind which must first occur. And so I pray primarily for that, having been there, once, myself.
Steynian 328 « Free Canuckistan! (February 26, 2009, 7:10 am).
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