It’s safe to say that if councillor Doug Ford has a summer reading list, Margaret Atwood isn’t on it. As the mayor’s big brother said during his recent very public set-to with the celebrated author over possible library closures, he wouldn’t know Atwood if he passed her on the street.
Media types had great fun with that one, and with Ford’s remark that he’d prefer a few more Tim Hortons to bibliothèques in his ward. Funny.
It’s sometimes hard to separate fiction from non-fiction when it comes to the brothers Ford, Councillor Doug and Mayor Rob.
Doug’s off-the-cuff pronouncements and the mayor’s bullying may be great fodder for 72-point headlines, but at what point should we consider their assertions dangerous to critical thinking?
When Doug tells homeless people, as he did a few months back, to “get a job,” or calls them “nuts,” why are some more amused than horrified?
That the national and foreign press have taken notice of the Fords’ buffoonery is a wake-up call. We can’t just snicker at the Fords’ antics, scoffing at their “lie-berries” and such as the ridiculous yahooisms of fools. They’re more troubling than that. In the words of Councillor Janet Davis, the mayor and his executive are an embarrassment and out of control.
Recent events have caused Atwood to wonder aloud if there’s room in our city for people like her – in other words, for a creative cultural class. Is Atwood being alarmist? I think not if we weigh the economic and social costs of that proposition.
Just as the mayor plans to cull the “garbage” (as he likes to call city employees) from the public service, I imagine he and his brother wouldn’t lose any sleep over a similar exodus from T.O. of the “elites” they deride.
Speaking of Atwood’s friends in the chattering classes... Just where have they been while the brother’s Ford have been busily turning our fair metropolis into the laughing stock of North America?
The eerie silence of community groups wary of criticizing the Ford admin lest their funding be cut seems to have infected the caste of folks who, noblesse oblige, used to have something to say about the welfare of the have-nots in our city as well as the way it is run.
Where are their protests over the Fords’ cost-cutting agenda?
The Toronto City Summit Alliance (recently renamed the Greater Toronto Civic Action Alliance, and the new regional outlook is maybe part of the problem) has been missing in action, at least publicly, on the debate over service cuts proposed by consultants KPMG.
Not a peep on the destructive course being charted by Ford & Company, save a letter penned by Civic Action chair John Tory to the Community Development and Recreation Committee in mid-July on its plan to remove priority designations from our most economically challenged neighbourhoods.
Tory says the group is opting for a quieter advocacy, “while the political process seems increasingly less able to tackle issues [on diversity, environment and incomes] successfully.”
The Board of Trade, too, for all its talk of the need for innovation and Toronto’s declining prosperity index, seems content to watch the Fords sacrifice our long-term economic well-being for symbolic one-time savings.
A Forum Research poll showing that residents are angry enough about libraries to change their vote in the next election seems to have ignited a brush fire.
Some of Ford’s allies on council have been flushed out of the weeds and forced to stand up for their constituents.
Still, let’s not forget that some of these same pols expressed no such reservations about cutting library staff during the 2011 budget process, or closing the Urban Affairs Library.
They’re also part of an administration that’s now asking all city departments, including libraries, to cut 10 per cent from their bottom line in 2012.
Some in the mayor’s office would rather Doug shut the fuck up because of the PR complications he poses for Mayor Rob. Yet that bombast serves the purpose of letting Ford Nation know the Brothers Grim are still working for them.
As for that summer reading list, Fahrenheit 451 might be a good choice for brother Doug. Its dystopian theme is in keeping with the world the councillor is trying to create right here in the big smoke – minus, perhaps, the mechanical book-sniffing dog.
Origin
Source: NOW
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