Friday, October 17, 2008

The Stink of Power

Warren Kinsella recently published a blog post called Happy. It shows a photo of Andrew Telegdi and has a one-sentence explanation of why he's happy that Telegdi, an MP in Kinsella's party, lost the recent election. The sentence cites two occasions long in the past when Telegdi refused to apologize for things Kinsella thought he should apologize for. One of the transgressions happened in 1974.

The idea that Kinsella could be so nasty really got to me, until I remembered a story about Telegdi himself. Telegdi had a hate on for Bob Rae during the leadership campaign, and the reason was that Rae didn't return a phone call from Telegdi shortly after Rae became premier.

In both of these cases it seems that being in a position of power made a guy feel justified to act on his grievances and put the hurt on someone. Most of us wouldn't even think of doing something like that, partly because we're not asseholes, but also because we know we couldn't get away with it.

Kinsella is a pundit who appears on all sorts of media outlets opining about Liberal matters, and I guess he's out there slamming people he has grievances against - since he's doing it in his blog. Telegdi influenced the delegates that went to the leadership convention.

It's not a great way to run a party.

No comments: