So much spleen and yet SO little spine ...

Oh God, Warren! Stop! Please, please, please stop!

Your capacity to make people so elaborately ashamed of the humanity they share with you is beyond reckoning. It's got to the point where I can't even begin to keep track of the compound absurdities you offer us in each new glimpse of the Bizarro World you inhabit.

Where to begin?

First: he posts this picture--of Randy Hillier, John Tory, Lisa McLeod and Scott Reid all at a recent Progressive Conservative BBQ-thing--to which he added various tenth grade level petulances in the form of thought bubbles next to each of their heads. (I particularly like the line "mental note to self" next John Tory's. Yes, Warren--the thought bubble rather implied that it wasn't a verbal note to self).

Now, take a good look at the photo and observe that the only truly offensive thing about it is its being so completely devoid of any phrase that is, in any sense, actually funny. (Would that he had unloaded a proper old misogynist line or two and those thirty seconds of my life wouldn't have been so utterly wasted.)

So what happens? The Progressive Conservatives concerned--in what I would've thought was a ludicrously far-fetched bid to hoist Kinsella by his own petard--make a great big stink over the apparently sexist overtones attributable to what Ms. McLeod is meant to have been thinking in the picture. (i.e. "I very much wish I was somewhere else, at this very moment. Baking cookies, perhaps. Oh my.")

So what does Kinsella do? Does he shrug off the accusation as absolutely pathetic? Does he tell the people concerned that he just as easily could've put the caption above John Tory's head as Ms. McLeod's? ... Well, no, obviously. That would require a spine or testicles. So does he suck it up and just offer the apology that his lack of spine and testicles requires of him? Well, not quite. An unreserved apology would, unfortunately, require the bare minimum of a lingering sense of honour.

So instead he offers something calling itself an unequivocal apology, but which, of course, contains a staggering number of equivocations, followed by a slurry of false and semi-articulate sentiment, topped off with the usual dose of 'far from any of this making me look bad, it actually proves that I'm a much better person than even I had assumed.' Here's a sample (given the absence of a permalink):

I could equivocate, I suppose. I could be a spin doctor, and query whether the media organizations which have assigned reporters to the story (the Globe, the Star and the Sun) did so because of my ongoing freelance column gig (media critic at the National Post). Or I could suggest that Cheri di Novo’s outrage relates to the fact that I loudly opposed the political candidacy of a person who had actually smuggled drugs in Bibles (which I did, and still do). Or I could wonder why Lisa MacLeod is upset about what I said, but not at all about her fellow Conservative candidate, Randy Hillier, who opposes support for “Quebec, Native, Arts, Homosexual, Urban and Multi cultures” (that’s what he said). Or I could point out that I have columnized against violent pornography, and anti-women movies, and the terrible prostitution ads found at the back of a certain Toronto media organization’s entertainment weekly (they know who they are). Or I could quote one of my editors at the Post, who emailed this to me an hour ago, when I gave him a head’s-up that I would be a media football tomorrow in the competition: “Kinsella a sexist? Honestly Warren it is beyond absurd. I don't think anyone who knows you would ever believe such tripe.”

Or, you know, I could give some other excuse. But I won’t. As I have myself advised others before: when you make a dumb mistake, admit it, apologize, and learn from it.

... Nothing like watching a guy getting forced to lick a pair of boots clean, only to have him then bend over and crap on them so's he can lick 'em clean again voluntarily. Not only doesn't it stink, it tastes good too!

Verily, Warren, you are our own real life David Brent.


H/T Dust My Broom