Catscam, day five

Sing Tao -- a Chinese-language newspaper with a bigger circulation than any Canadian paper other than the Globe, Post and Star -- just can't get enough of Warren Kinsella. But not in a good way.

Today they have another story about Kinsella and his public statement that Chinese Canadians eat cat meat and serve it in restaurants.

This story chugs along. If you were Chinese Canadian, and the right hand man to the leader of the opposition said that, wouldn't you be incensed? It shows what Ignatieff's team thinks when they let their guard down. It would be fascinating to hear Kinsella riff about, say, Indian food.

Here's Sing Tao's latest on the saga. Here's Google's translation of that page. Again, it's rough, but you can get the picture pretty clearly.

Let me highlight the two funniest quotes from the story. First, from the restaurateur. (Sheila-Kim is how Kinsella's name is transliterated into Chinese, by the way):

YangCheng Sen Feng Restaurant proprietor told this newspaper Friday said that Sheila Kim-discriminatory remarks are offensive, the impact of the restaurant's reputation. "He the man we all know that he always talking nonsense."

Always talking nonsense? That's about right. Kinsella is lucky that the restaurateur doesn't take a page from his own playbook, and sue him for slander of goods. But it's clear the resataurateur knows nobody takes Kinsella's "nonsense" too seriously -- except, apparently, Michael Ignatieff.

But... maybe not. Look at this fascinating tid-bit, from Ignatieff's spokesman. Again. "Sheila" is Kinsella in Chinese:

Ignatieff... Communications Director (Jill Fairbrother) to this newspaper said that the volunteers Sheila is not the Liberal Party staff, Ignatieff would not comment on the incident.

Ignatieff has disowned Kinsella's comments, and won't even dignify them with a reply. Kinsella? "Kim Sheila?" Who's that? He's not even on the Liberal staff -- we know nothing about him.

That's not good enough, of course. As Ignatieff knows, to be silent in the face of prejudice is to implicitly condone it. Simply because Kinsella isn't on the party's payroll changes nothing about that -- Kinsella holds himself out as an Ignatieff spokesman, paid or not. Fighting intolerance doesn't just apply to salaried staff.

Personally, I think Ignatieff has more class than Kinsella, and that Kinsella's eruption truly offends him. I bet Kinsella has a half dozen calls into Ignatieff, none of which have been returned yet.

Ignatieff needs a war room, but not one that goes to war on Chinese Canadians -- a war in which Ignatieff's prospects are collateral damage.