What ludicrous snobbery. What ridiculous illogic. What a great pile of putridness.
It’s okay for Rob Ford to have been arrested for and charged with
- assault
- drug possession
- driving under the influence
- domestic dispute
- uttering death threats
and for making asinine comments:
- "I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day."
- “If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you won't get AIDS probably."
- "Oriental people [are] slowly taking over [because they] work like dogs."
- “I can’t remember exactly what it was. I wasn’t drunk. [I] shared “a couple bottles” or “a couple of litres” of wine with [my] wife. [M]aybe I shouldn’t have been driving.”
- Mr. Ford endorses the views of a fundamentalist Christian pastor who said same-sex marriage could “dismantle” a “healthy democratic civilization.” Appearing alongside Pastor Wendell Brereton, Mr. Ford says: “We’re together. We have the same thoughts.” He adds: “I support traditional marriage. I always have. But if people want to, to each your own. I’m not worried about what people do in their private life. I look out for taxpayers’ money.”
- The Toronto Sun reports that Mr. Ford offers to help an ill man “score” the powerful painkiller OxyContin in a taped phone conversation. “I’ll try buddy, I’ll try,” Mr. Ford tells Dieter Doneit-Henderson. “I don’t know this shit, but I’ll fucking try to find it.” A few moments later Mr. Ford asks: “What does OxyContin go for on the street, so I have an idea?” Mr. Ford later accuses Mr. Doneit-Henderson of setting him up, saying he only suggested buying illegal narcotics to get a scary stalker off the phone.
- During a council debate over a pothole, Mr. Ford calls fellow Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby “a joke. She’s a waste of time. A waste of skin.”
- During a council debate over speeding up construction of affordable housing units, Mr. Ford says: “People do not want government housing built in the city of Toronto. They want roads fixed, more police presence, but they don’t want more government housing that will depreciate the value of their property.”
- Mr. Ford questions the utility of grant programs for transgender and transsexual people during a council debate. “I don’t understand. No. 1, I don’t understand a transgender, I don’t understand, is it a guy dressed up like a girl or a girl dressed up like a guy? And we’re funding this for, I don’t know, what does it say here? We’re giving them $3,210?”
- During a council debate on whether there should be homeless shelters across the city, rather than only downtown, Mr. Ford says: “This is an insult to my constituents to even think about having a homeless shelter in their ward. And you want me to have a public meeting to discuss this? Why don’t we have a public lynching?”
- During a council budget debate, Mr. Ford calls fellow Councillor George Mammoliti a “Gino-boy.” Mr. Mammoliti says the remark is a racial slur: “I heard it in school. Hearing it at city hall shocks me.” Mr. Ford denies making the remark.
- Mr. Ford questions a grant for a video about homosexuality in Toronto’s South Asian community, telling The National Post: “I have no problem giving money out to physically or mentally handicapped children or seniors, but spending $5,000 on this video is disgusting, it is absolutely disgusting to spend this amount of money on this, whatever it was called, video.”
…as long as he is a big, tough, no-nonsense, dishonest, racist, homophobic, sexist, violent, classist, really stupid – which is key – meaty guy who bears no resemblance to those high falutin’ lawyer types who run around in expensive suits layin’ down the law/s…
Oh my God.
What idiocy. And how monumentally depressing. Why does one wrong person (David Miller) mean that someone like Rob Ford is right? Or even less wrong? And what happened to our Mel Lastman memories?
You remember Mayor Mel, the man so many Torontonians initially lauded; the one who, after his wife Marilyn was caught shoplifting from an Eaton's store in Toronto, threatened to kill then-CITY-TV reporter Adam Vaughan unless he stopped reporting on his family?
The man who said to the Toronto reporter about the Olympic Games, “"What the hell do I want to go to a place like Mombasa? I'm sort of scared about going out there, but the wife is really nervous. I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me.”
The man who, during the 2003 SARS crisis, said in an interview on CNN when asked what the World Health Organization was doing about the crisis: "They don't know what they're talking about. I don't know who this group is. I've never heard of them before."
The man who, during his reign as mayor, held a surprise news conference alongside his wife, announcing that he had had a 14-year extramarital affair with Grace Louie, a former Bad Boy employee. Louie, along with her two sons by Lastman, sued for six million dollars, claiming that they were his illegitimate children but had not received sufficient child support. Lastman denied responsibility for the two children, and successfully fought them off when they tried to claim a share of his estate, although it was already revealed that he was indeed their father.
The man who served for two terms?
And if you are one of those people missing the significance of the comparison, then you are probably going to vote for Rob Ford even if he has someone tied up in the trunk of a car.
As if those ridiculous, shameful, put-on riots during the G20 Summit were not embarrassing and damaging enough, but we have to cheer on this functional, regressive, unenlightened, lacking-in-nuance Neanderthal?
Tell me this, then:
Is Rob Ford the person you would want to marry?
Is Rob Ford the person you would want your daughter to marry?
Is Rob Ford the person you would want as a son?
Is Rob Ford the person you would want to call father?
Is Rob Ford the person you would want determining immigration in a city that prides itself on its enormous and magnificent immigrant population? You know, the same population who drive our buses, clean our houses, wait on us in restaurants, pay extra money to attend our schools, and who also work as lawyers, nurses, financiers, construction workers, plumbers, psychiatrists, archaeologists, surgeons and civil servants to support and keep this city running?
Is Rob Ford someone you’d want behind the wheel of your car, especially when he can’t remember whether he has had a few glasses or a few litres of wine, or when he is angry with – raging against – you?
Is Rob Ford someone you would want taking care of your AIDS-afflicted brother or sister or mother or father or child?
Is Rob Ford someone you would like driving behind you while you negotiate bike lanes and traffic?
Is Rob Ford someone you would want teaching (Ethics, English, Journalism, Psychology, Labour Management, Gender Studies, Medicine, Law…) our public, high school or university students?
Is Rob Ford someone you would want to hear describing anyone as “a waste of skin”?
Is Rob Ford someone you want – especially in this economy, where any one of us could be out of a job and our homes in less than a month – denying people rights and access to or availability of homeless shelters?
If Rob Ford is unsuitable for any one of those tasks and positions, then why would you want to vote for him as Mayor?
We used to laugh a lot up here north of the 49th parallel when George Dubya Bush was elected – twice elected, in fact – as President of the United States. If I had a dollar for every student, friend, co-worker, family member, or person on the street who mocked, outright ridiculed, lambasted, derided, criticized, and scorned the lunacy of the American public decision in voting in this ridiculous, corrupt, remarkably stupid, contemptibly dishonest individual, I would be rich.
Well get ready, everyone. Because sooner than later, if we elect Rob Ford as Mayor of Toronto, that’s what everyone else will be saying about us.
You mark my words.
