He who laughs last...

From XGH:

A while after my blog opened, I got sick and I was petrified that maybe it was because I was rude about the Gedolim (it's not rational, I know) during the early days of the Science and Torah ban, and I was in for it. I vividly remember in Yeshivah hearing all sorts of stories about people who crossed rabbis and ended up dead. (Part of the reason I closed down some blogs). Anyways I turned out to be ok, but meanwhile the two biggest players in the Science and Torah ban on the pro-ban side have now been thoroughly disgraced - one is in jail and the other is the new Chareidi Tiger Woods. Pretty freaky, no?

Though I was never as rude as XGH or his alter egos, I was a Slifkin man from the beginning, and the recipient of piles of nasty threats. Kishke and Ed and other functionally illiterate morons from Lakewood promised me I'd suffer all sorts of misfortune for daring to state a point of view that coincided with Rishonim and Achronim but not with R. Matisyahu Solomon and R. Elya Wachtofogel and other boldfaced names. Five years later, we know the Rabbis were either manipulated by zealot scumbags, or making rulings that were intended only for sequestered Haredi enclaves and not for Torah Judaism at large. Two of the leading zealot scumbags, as XGH says, are finished, while Slifkin and his supporters stand tall.  What superstitious explanation can we offer for this turn of events? In January 2005, one especially obnoxious critic warned me that "God repays sinners" To this I can now only reply "yehi shem Hashem mivorach."