Warren Kinsella has appeared in various places where people are looking into actions at the federal public works department. He used to be executive assistant to the minister just before the sponsorship program started but while other actions were going on that have come under scrunity.
Warren's also a dramatic little fellow, with a flair for genuine self-promotion. I am a rank amateur in comparison to Kicking ass, Kinsella's lightweight book of a couple of years ago. That's the book that sits in plain sight on the bookshelf of political poseurs across the country and holds up the outhouse window at the cabin for the rest of us.
Yesterday's Kinsella testimony before a Commons committee looking at polling contracts was vintage. Tons of contrived intrigue. When asked about people being threatened, Kinsella drops in a totally unrelated tale of a mysterious phone call Kinsella claims to have received a mere moments before showing up. The supposed threat? That the caller would disavow whatever testimony Kinsella gave.
No breaking of legs.
No "we know where you live and where your kids go to school."
Nope.
The big threat: "I'll deny everything."
Obviously comparisons the Cons have been making between Liberals in Quebec and the mob are grossly overblown. Can you imagine say a Joe Pesci or a Bobbie de Niro calling up some guy about to rat them out?
Pesci: " Listen you little rat f***. No matter what you say, I am gonna stick my tongue out and blow raspberries.
So if you know what's good for you, you'll stop.
No matter what you say, I'll disavow you.
Calleee: Sorry, I just lost that last bit on the cell phone. Did you say disembowel me?
Pesci: Ewwwww. No. Don't be gross. I said disavow - d-i-s-a-v-o-w- as in deny. As in state words to the contrary."
Hurt me; whip me; call me Warren.
This is the stuff of Monty Python and the Spanish Inquisition not a serious parliamentary committee hearing into supposed wrong-doing.
Cripes, Warren, did you forget the Comfy Chair? Have the Cons got all the stuffing up one end of the Soft Cushion? Where exactly is Cardinal Fang, anyway?
To make matters all that much worse, there were the members of the committee looking appalled that someone would threaten witnesses. I think I heard audible gasps of shock. I'd call the whole thing a put-up job, but even that idea would be too bizarre for Warren Kinsella. It would mean a guy involved in battling separatists had to feed a question to a Blochead in order to whisper his tale of threats.
Meanwhile over at The Source of All Wisdom, otherwise known as Warren's blog, the man is threatening to sue Scott Reid for public comments after the Kinsella performance. (If you didn't see the tented fingers and hushed voice appearing by measures contrite or sincere, as appropriate, you missed a Juno award in the making. Warren's voice dropped to a mere whisper at several points, an old trick to draw in an audience already sucked in by your earlier theatrics and emphasize the melo-dramatic nature of the testimony. Perhaps Warren was conveying genuine fear that he would be "disavowed". Perhaps he was remembering his days treading the boards.)
By the way, Scott's heinous crime was to offer the opinion that Warren was telling lies. Maybe there is a case. We'll see.
I am not sure Warren is fabricating everything he said. Not being tied to either the Chretienites or the Martinites, I can look at Warren without animus. At the end of it all, I found his testimony lacking in credibility and perhaps in veracity. There was sufficient cause to doubt the accuracy of his accounts.
And in plain English: what I heard yesterday was a load of overblown, melodramatic bullshit. A least the bit about threats was bullshit. The rest of it was so burdened by Warren's "interpretation" - coming as a supplicant, for example - that I figure the guy should have written pot-boilers instead of briefing notes.
It got to the point where I could imagine former Kinsella university dates across the country pondering once again how much smaller Kinsella inches seem to be than the ones ordinary mortals use to measure stuff.
Ah well, there is a reason why government buildings are known among Ottawa types as Disneyland on the Rideau.
Oh yeah, and if you scroll down Warren's blog today, you can see Warren denying that he ever claimed he was threatened, slagging anybody connected to the current crowd of Liberals and finally claiming that he actually hates the limelight, like any good political backroom hack is supposed to.
Given Warren's public efforts to avoid anonymity, I find that last Kinsella claim as hard to swallow as anything else.
For another take on Warren, take a look at Damien Penny. The Corner Brook guy who is probably the province's most eclectic and widely known blogger has a set of links to the others who have either taken a swipe at Warren or felt his wrath.
