Thanks to Mayor Rob Ford, I’m considering lying when people ask me where I live, the way people from Cleveland say they’re from Moore, Okla., because even with the tornado damage, Moore would manage to notice its Sowell serial killers and Castro dungeoneers.
The Star’s rolling thunder story of a crack video isn’t a day that will live in infamy, it’s more of a bunch of weeks. What if there’s worse to come?
Just before voting day on Oct. 25, 2010, I warned readers that voting for Ford was like agreeing to a one-night stand while under the influence. Ford voters were irate. Are they happy now? I’m not happy to have been proved right, I’m horrified.
“This is the only thing I know about Toronto,” one American commenter said Monday, and my blood froze. Margaret Atwood, New-York-without-the-stuff, friendly multiculturalism, Janet Carding’s ROM, all this is to be lost because of a mayor who veers between Sad and Angry, between Lashing Out Emotionally and Just Plain Lashing Out — you know the type — but never ventures near Smart.
As I type this, Ford’s deputy, Doug Holyday is clipping his nails in council. That I need to specify “fingernails” is how low we have sunk. He could put someone’s eye out.
There have been 42 low points in Ford’s mayoralty, as detailed by the Star , from sexist and racist slurs, to drunken arguments in public, to a chaotic home life, to repeated court hearings on alleged financial wrongdoing, to, oh dozens more, a relentless sordid drip.
I’m worried that unless he resigns, he’s going to punch a baby in the face or run himself over. I’m waiting for spontaneous Ford combustion, right there on the sidewalk.
Ford had a brother in arms Tuesday. Prime Minister Stephen Harper faced the nation and wouldn’t mention the words Nigel, Duffy or Wallin, or even the number 90,000. Ford had many more words to avoid but the Harper-Ford stance was the same. Toddlers think that if they close their eyes, you can’t see them.
Harper and Ford closed their eyes on Tuesday but journalists milled around (you can do this on Twitter) in shock. Don Draper’s advice from Mad Men — “This never happened. It will shock you how much this never happened” — does not apply in politics.
Voters are different from journalists. They observe politics, they don’t live and breathe it. Busy voters get a glimpse of shamelessness bordering on theft and it stays with them. They don’t move on to the next thing. They sense they’re being treated with contempt and do a slow burn.
I have slid into sympathy for Ford many times — partly because he is so overweight that I fear he will die in front of us and partly because he occasionally seems affable, a male quality I enjoy — and been disappointed, sometimes within minutes. I cannot forgive his physical threats against Daniel Dale, a journalist whose prose and moral character I admire.
On the notorious video, Star journalists Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan heard Ford say this as he appeared to drug himself with his sinister companions: “Everyone expects me to be right-wing, I’m supposed to be this great . . .” And then he lost his train of thought.
What was he planning to say?
End this sentence aloud: “I’m supposed to be this great. . .
“White hope.”
“ Big pillock.”
“Pathetic omni-shambles.”
“Melting shelf of bad habits.”
Or perhaps a genuine version of those awful labels people use as I.D. on their Twitter feed. “Dad. Husband. Lecher. Mayor. Football coach. Foodie. Magnet-hound. Hopeless at all seven.”
Or just write: Rob Ford: Quandary incarnate. A desperate futile we’re-done-here. A Mt. Edith Cavell of disappointment. A mind so thick that it makes light rays go bendy. The people you pay to bury the bad news about you are at fracking level.
I’ll stop if you will, Mayor Ford. We had our brief encounter. Please do the decent thing and resign.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Heather Mallick
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