Not that anyone on DK really needs another diary about the disgrace to the human race known as Toronto mayor Rob Ford, but some commentaries about said jerk from a few Canadian media outlets are definitely worth reading. In fact, it's a difficult temptation not to post the whole texts of those commentaries here, just because they need to be read and internalized, certainly by Toronto residents with brains, perhaps less so by DKers, even though sad to say, it's easy to find American parallels. More below the flip....
One place to start is this commentary by William Wolfe-Wylie on the Canada.com website, after an appearance by the Ford brothers on a CBC interview program(me), where Peter Mansbridge soft-balled them, to Wolfe-Wylie's anger. Wolfe-Wylie calls out 3 lies by the lying liar Rob Ford in less than the 1st 3 minutes of the interview, which Mansbridge didn't call out:
"In the first two-and-a-half minutes of his lengthy CBC interview Monday, Rob Ford told three lies. They were uncontested by Peter Mansbridge, and it went downhill from there.
The first lie: 'The people elected me with the largest mandate in Canada’s history.'
The second lie: 'Having the lowest tax increase of any major city in North America.'
The third lie: 'I've showed up every day to work for the last 13 years.'
Wolfe-Wylie then goes on to rip apart Ford's lies there:
"Ford was not elected with the strongest mandate in Canadian history. He was not even elected with the strongest mandate in Toronto history. By both measures of percentage and raw vote count, that title belongs to Mel Lastman since the city was amalgamated into the Toronto megacity. Lastman had approximately 100,000 more votes in 2000 than Ford did in the 2010 election, and he won 4 per cent more of the vote in 1997 than Ford did in 2010.
Nor is Toronto facing the lowest tax increase in North America. As pointed in Metro weeks ago, both Windsor, Ont., and San Antonio, Texas, have tax freezes which have been in place for some time.
Nor has Rob Ford shown up to work every day for the past 13 years. City councillor and mayoral attendance records in committee meetings and council meetings are a matter of public record. Anyone can look them up here. Since he has been mayor, Rob Ford has been declared absent from committee or council meetings 84 times out of 440 meetings. That’s an absentee record of about 19 per cent."
Even if Mansbridge didn't do his job (admittedly not the easiest thing to do in real time, without a truly encyclopedic grasp of the facts or a producer passing a quick note to the interviewer), in
The Globe and Mail a few days later, Ann Hui and Jill Mahoney went a bit further than White-Wylie
here, in calling out Rob Ford on 9 lies. Examples, of a more salacious kind than lying about his political and performance record:
"Claim: Mr. Ford has never been under the influence of drugs or alcohol at work.
Mr. Ford told Fox News on Nov. 17: 'I've never been under the influence of alcohol or drugs at a council meeting or any time in office.' On Nov. 19, he told CP24: 'I’ve been straight as an arrow, every day, for 13 years down there.'
Check: Chris Fickel told police he had seen Mr. Ford intoxicated 'numerous times including at the office, football practices and events,' according to the police summary. Mr. Fickel said Mr. Ford was drunk at the office up to 20 times in one year, usually after 11 a.m. on weekdays. Mr. Fickel said he and other staffers bought alcohol for the mayor. Mark Towhey told police he believed Mr. Ford drank alcohol at the office and Mr. Nejatian told police he found what he suspected to be a marijuana cigarette in Mr. Ford’s desk in February or March of this year. As well, a report by City Hall security staff about St. Patrick’s Day 2012 said that an intoxicated Mr. Ford returned to City Hall around 2 a.m. and visited the security desk with a half-empty bottle of brandy."
Or these whoppers related to his illegal drug use:
"Claim: Mr. Ford didn’t admit to having smoked crack cocaine earlier because journalists didn’t ask him.
When Mr. Ford admitted to having smoked crack cocaine in a drunken stupor on Nov. 5, he said he hadn’t come clean earlier because journalists had never asked him the right question. “I wasn’t lying,” he told reporters. “You didn’t ask the correct questions. No, I’m not an addict and no, I do not do drugs.”
Check: Mr. Ford has been asked repeatedly whether he had ever used illegal drugs. For instance, on May 30, a reporter asked the mayor: “Have you done any illegal drugs since you’ve been mayor?” Mr. Ford responded: “Anything else?” In an interview the day before Mr. Ford’s admission, AM640 host John Oakley asked: “Have you used crack?” Mr. Ford replied: “Johnny, listen, I’m not a drug addict. I’m not an alcoholic. … I can assure you, Johnny, I do not use drugs."
Further down the stream:
"Claim: Mr. Ford hasn’t smoked crack cocaine in more than a year. Mr. Ford said he hasn’t smoked crack cocaine “in over a year” in an interview with CNN that aired on Nov. 18.
Check: The video that apparently shows Mr. Ford smoking crack was filmed in February, according to a police document released earlier this week."
Or this one:
"Claim: That he hasn’t known his friend and alleged drug dealer Alessandro (Sandro) Lisi for more than two years. In an interview with CP24 Tuesday, Mayor Ford said “I didn’t even know Mr. Lisi two years ago.”
Check: A letter written on Mayor Ford’s official City of Toronto letterhead and signed by Mr. Ford himself claims that Mr. Lisi worked on his 2010 election campaign. The letter, dated June 4, 2013, was intended as a character reference for Mr. Lisi, who had just been convicted of threatening death against an ex-girlfriend."
But here's what's scary about Rob Ford, namely that there is a hard core of support for him, "Ford Nation", that in
the sharp words of
Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson, will stand by him "No. Matter. What." (
emphasis mine):
"That Toronto Mayor Rob Ford lacks dignity, self-control, shame or any sense of public responsibility, and that he has brought international mockery to his city, to say nothing of himself, is less to be remarked upon – for all this is self-evident – than that perhaps a third of the electorate stands resolutely behind him.
What can it mean that someone who has so demeaned his office and his city, someone who has confessed to breaking the law, still commands such support?"
Simpson goes on to eviscerate the stupidity, hypocrisy and blindness of "Ford Nation" (sorry, no other words will do -
emphasis again mine):
"That they stick with him really says more about them and their way of viewing the world of government than it does about him.
There is now in Canada, according to all sorts of polls, about 30 per cent of the electorate that is hard-core Conservative/conservative. For them, public policy is almost exclusively about paying lower and lower taxes, while, of course, demanding the same level of services. As long as their leaders deliver on that promise, or keep talking about delivering even if they don’t, this is the prism through which all is judged."
Hmm, can you say "keep the government off my Medicare"? Simpson then goes on to the Canadian equivalent of IOKIYAR, which is fitting, since Ford belongs to the Conservative Party:
"Conservatives who support Mr. Ford are the “tough on crime” voters of the kind also targeted by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. You would logically assume therefore that a mayor who confesses to having broken laws – smoking crack cocaine, for example – would be just the sort of public person the Conservatives/conservatives would revile. Apparently not."
Simpson then butters up what he presumably deems to be "honest conservatives" (such people do exist, as much as DKers might not want to admit it). But then he shows how Rob Ford is a total affront to what should be "true conservative" values:
Conservatives, at their philosophical best, have always placed a high premium on personal responsibility. They believe, much less than liberals or socialists, in the social factors that influence personal behaviour. For Conservatives, individuals are responsible for their behaviour, not their upbringing, surroundings or social conditions.
In Rob Ford, here is a man who revels in calling himself a conservative, yet has displayed a flagrant and persistent disregard for personal responsibility, as well as having failed to act in a responsible way as mayor. Rather than being condemned by supporters for this betrayal of the conservative creed based on self-control and personal responsibility, he has been elevated to some weird kind of cult figure, deserving of sympathy and support."
Next, how's this for slapping down Canadian conservatives, using "reality based" rhetoric:
"The Conservative/conservative core, as we see in the federal government, is resistant to evidence if it conflicts with ideological nostrums. As in Fordworld, federal ministers look facts in the face and deny them, prefer to lecture rather than reason, to posture as the friend of the 'people' against undefined but dangerous 'elites,' and live in an intellectually self-contained world where curiosity is banished and slogans take the place of deliberation.'
To show just how scary Simpson's assertion of the continuing support for Rob Ford from the idiots known as Ford Nation, Ann Hui has another
Globe and Mail article
here that starts off:
"A new poll suggests that, despite Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's recent admissions of smoking crack cocaine and drinking to excess, his popularity has barely seen a dent – 42 per cent of Toronto residents said they approve of the job he's doing, and 33 per cent still plan on voting for him.....
The 42 per cent approval rating is just a slight drop from a similar Forum poll conducted Nov. 6, which had his approval at that time at 44 per cent."
If a Liberal mayor of Toronto had done the same sleazy things that Rob Ford had done, you can bet that support for such a hypothetical Liberal would be next to nothing, and right-wing media would be all over such outrages (and actually, rightly so, as liberal media would be all over that also). But IOKIYAR isn't a uniquely American phenomenon when it comes to conservative/reactionary sleaziness, sad to say. In fact, the recent move by the Toronto city council could possibly backfire next year, according to Lorne Bozinoff, the president of Forum Research, which conducted the poll referred to in the article:
"Mr. Bozinoff said even though the recent poll does appear to show some slip in support among swing voters, Mayor Ford may still have a chance in 2014. In fact, the drama at City Hall earlier this week, which saw him stripped of many of his powers, might have been a 'huge political miscalculation,' he said.
'It might set him up for re-election. Because now he's going to run against council, which he's effective at. I think he’s less effective defending his own record.'"
It would be nice to think that as Rob Ford keeps doing and saying stupid things, the voters of Toronto, or least enough of them, may wise up in time for the 2014 mayoral election. However, one should never count out the stupidity of a sufficient number of voters to cause havoc, as we learned to our cost in 2010. It's sad that Ford Nation just can't see that, in the words of Wolfe-Wylie:
"Rob Ford was not stripped of his powers because of recreational drug use. It was because the mayor has consorted with criminal elements, lied about it, and then refused to speak to police about it on the advice of his lawyer. He was stripped of his power because council realized they can no longer trust him, that they no longer know what influences him and that he refuses to answer questions that desperately need answers.
This is not a story about recreational drugs. This is a story about a mayor brilliantly dodging hard questions about criminal elements in his life. For the media to play into it is devastatingly inappropriate."
And of course, Ford Nation is happy for their hero not be questioned on his sleazy behavio(u)r. This shows yet again the catch of democracy, namely that if you have 1 million voters picking the conservative douchebag vs. 900,000 voters picking a more straight-arrow liberal, guess what: douchebag wins. Another reminder that liberals, progressives, those on the left have to show up and vote,
no matter what, if not necessarily for the good guys, at least against the bad guys. Voting machines don't care if you have to hold your nose or about ideological purity.
What will happen next year in Toronto in 2014? Danged if I know. I know what should happen regarding Rob Ford, of course, but nothing is a safe bet these days, except that he'll provide material for late night comedians on both sides of the 49th parallel for some time to come.
With that depressing prospect, time for the usual SNLC protocol, after you've voted in the poll, of course ;) , namely your loser stories of the week, which hopefully are not on the scale of Rob Ford's ickiness.