I’m not really sure this is worth the effort.
Or at least, my subconscious isn’t convinced which might explain the hours and hours of procrastination I’ve been subjected to, trying to sit down and write this out. 
Ignore it, my better me tells me, no good can come from harping on it. But my ugly me (who I’m partial to) leans in and badgers me to do this thing. This cannot stand, unchallenged, I’m challenged. Nonsense must be called out. Yeah but… good me whines… Some things are better left ignored. Let them simply rot in their own putrid, bilious juices. My God, you are so fucking naïve, ugly me yells at good me, and so the argument continues as does the procrastination.
Oh, Sue-Ann Levy. How can such a mean-spirited, talentless typist cause me so much consternation? I mean, I don’t even read the Toronto Sun and highly suspect anyone who does aside from gathering their sports news. Yet she and it represent the nasty, squalid side of the Ford Nation. Ignoring her and the paper that employees her services allows for misinformation and character assassination to stand. However, addressing what spills seemingly unedited from her poisoned pen (or whatever passes for the modern equivalent) may only lend credence to it.
Decisions, decisions.
It all started (again) last week when SAL got caught up in the whole Pride-QuAIA situation which she has been very vocal about. To do the brouhaha justice, read all about it in Xtra! where it was covered much more thoroughly by Andrea Houston. 
The thing you need to know is that in a flurry of Twitter activity, Ms. Levy managed to toss around an anti-Semite accusation (misspelled) and taunted another journalist with a ‘Johnny Jew’ epithet. Many deletions and one apology later, she was then removed from covering the ongoing Pride-QuAIA story for the Sun.
A peaceful silence ensued.
And then came this.
So many things coalesce along with the assorted bacteria and other single-celled beings in the pit of my stomach when I read a Sue-Ann Levy article, none of which makes me feel better as a human being. The least important but most glaringly apparent is the fact she is a terrible, terrible, terrible writer. Is that enough terribles? A terrible, terrible, terrible, monstrously terrible writer. Just terrible. There. That’s better.
To call her a hack is to heap unjustified scorn and derision on true hacks everywhere. Hackery suggests some form of organized, systemic badness. That’s a bar Ms. Levy simply doesn’t possess the creative vertical leap to clear. 
It’s all a stream-of-consciousness, spewed forth like the expressing of a dog’s anal glands, ideology and vitriol trumping logic, truth and basic construction of thought at every turn. No literate adult should write as poorly as Sue-Ann Levy does. Certainly, no literate adult should write as poorly as Sue-Ann Levy does and get paid for their efforts.
My offended artistic sensibilities aside, the real damage inflicted by Levy’s rant writings.. wrantings?.. is on the political discourse in and around City Hall. Like the radical right wing City Hall pols she so slavishly shills for, SAL now basks in the glow of Mayor Ford’s ascension to power, having been on the outside looking in during the Miller administration. To a one, they claim the exclusion was because the Millerites brooked no dissent although judging from their performance so far in office and in print, one could just as easily conclude that an inability or unwillingness to contribute anything positive to the proceedings might also have been factored in.
It’s Team Ford time now and no one epitomizes the nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah triumphalism better than Sue-Ann Levy. Because they won the election in October, they don’t have to justify themselves. They don’t have to defend or debate their ideas. The only fact that matters is the fact Rob Ford is mayor now. Suck on that, left wing kooks.
So it’s invective name-calling and innuendo from the mayor’s court reporter, Sue-Ann Levy. Reading one of her columns is like eaves-dropping on a teenager’s phone call with a friend. It’s all like, gawd, why doesn’t she just, like, shut up and mind her own business! I was talking to Dougie and she, like, all butted in. (Hint to Ms. Levy? If you really want to conduct a private interview with a councillor? There are these places at City Hall called ‘offices’. Go inside, close the door behind you and have at it.) I mean, did you hear her laugh? All horsey. Maybe we should start feeding her sugar cubes. Tee hee, tee hee.
Perhaps it’s because she herself lacks any principles other than obsequiousness to right wing power, Levy can only impugn the motives of anyone at council she disagrees with. And she disagrees with no one at council more than Adam Vaughan. There is nothing he does to SAL’s eyes that isn’t due to him angling for a run at the mayor’s job in 2014 and his bitter resentment Rob Ford now occupies that place. He has become her new bete noire, David Miller incarnate. 
It’s surprising that, nearly 6 months in, and she’s yet to come up with a derogatory nickname for him yet. Here’s a tip, Sue-Ann. Vaughan rhymes with yawn. Run with it.
Most disturbingly, Levy shares a dim view of council meetings at City Hall with her right wing bestest friends. “An exercise in sheer madness” she wrote about the debate over the city’s proposed new appointment process of agencies, boards and committees. “Look, I’m all for democracy,” Levy claimed in her article which, loosely translated, means she isn’t really, leading inevitably to this thought finisher, “but it was all just nonsense, grandstanding by a bunch of petulant councillors who can’t get it through their heads they no longer run the show at City Hall.”
In Sue-Ann Levy’s world, democracy is little more than ‘sheer madness’, ‘nonsense’, obstructionism, interfering in the city’s business and a “waste of time and tax dollars”, as duly quoted from the paradigm of democratic thought, Doug Ford.
Which is what makes Sue-Ann Levy more than simply an innocuous albeit annoying wingtard (oops. I meant, wingnut.) As eye-poppingly ludicrous as much of her wrantings are, she has a significant enough platform to amply pollute public discourse. She serves those seeking to push through an agenda with as little democratic input as possible and who believe that winning an election grants 4 years of autocratic rule. 
By belittling the established democratic process at City Hall, she undercuts democracy itself.
Of course, my good me suggests I may be giving Sue-Ann Levy a little too much credit. Is she really capable of thinking that far through things? She’s probably just writing love notes to those who are paying any attention to her whatsoever. Maybe all David Miller and his allies needed to do was give Sue-Ann the occasional scratch behind the ear and they would’ve had her eating out of their hands. Ooooooo, says ugly me. Listen to good you, getting all catty and stuff. It looks like Sue-Ann Levy brings out the worst in you.
Sue-Ann Levy brings out the worst in all of us.
— dividedly submitted by Cityslikr
She’s the Honey Badger of ‘jernalizm’
Could be you like reading the name calling and the anti-intellectual arguements! No doubt we’ll read about Miller & Giambrone and other people she calls names. Also you can hear her on Talk Radio; which is also right wing.
P.S. Here is an article from a candidate who thinks before he writes, right?
http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=180164
You OR Cat may want to go to this for research.
http://www.fairvote.ca/en/FVC-news/toronto-chapter-is-hosting-all-party-debate-april-20-on-democratic-reform-and-our-dysfuncti
I don’t require civility from columnists, but snark – ie: mean insults without content – is a waste of everyone’s time. Pinko leftard I may be, I still say Sue-Ann was awesome when Miller was in power. I mean, she was insane, but occasionally she could identify and hit a target worth hitting. Since Ford became Mayor, she has become his agent and propagandist. And even though her guy is in power, she still has the same persecution complex, and she has become plain mean (“leftard” insults not only left-wing politicians, who are fair game, but all the people who voted for them, who are not fair game, at least not in a democracy – and yes, I hated that NOW cover). Worst of all, I can write her column in my mind even before she does, using the same random collection of Fordesque mad-libs.
Every paper has one. The Star’s got Rosie Dimanno, the Globe has Margaret Wente (and, on occasion, Jan Wong), and the Post has, uh, the entire staff of the Post?
Dear mcflash,
A joke we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke heard via Jonathan Goldsbie that’s making the rounds at City Hall goes something like this: What’s the difference between Sue-Ann Levy and Royson James? Really, we’re asking because we don’t know.
I read in the Star someone complain about its liberal bias. I would have wrote that the other Toronto daily is right wing as well as the Globe and Post. Plus I noticed on today’s cover that Sun News is being promoted. I called their Day schedule; Foxy News.
Is Goldsbie, Johnny Jew?
Also, you may have been distracted.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/976729–waterfront-board-works
Rosie’s great, so is Blatch. Rarely agree with them, but their writing is full of life and original thought. Nobody else covers a courtroom better.
Wente basically retypes columns from Hitchens and David Brooks that are aimed at taking irrelevant pinkos down a peg. She displays too much pride in her self-imagined political incorrectness. As a result of her prideful willingness to offend, she sometimes stumbles backwards into actual racism, though I doubt she really is a racist. In fact, I am not sure she even believes half the stuff she writes.
Royson is struggling, but I still have hope he’ll get his groove back.
Warmington and Lilley are pure, idiotic hate, although Joe can occasionally surprise.
Marcus Gee is not always predictable, but he is no John Barber.
Salutin is always original and his own man. I still fondly remember how he called Joe Pantalone “a one-man lynch mob, with a whiff of Stalinism in the sense of harsh, mindless wielding of power in the name of left-wing values.” – ah, that’s the stuff.
I would first like to say that I am not a journalist, nor would I profess to be an overachiever or academic, I am one of those union people that Sue Ann Levy routinely disparages in the regular course of her day. We are not politicians, we are not anything but public servants. For the most part we come to work and do the dirty jobs that most people wouldn’t want to do. I have the blood of ambulance floors, I have worked long hours in cold wet weather, in the freezing cold, I have been taken to hospital twice while on the job one because of a work related injury and once from exposure from to toxic gases. I’m sorry there’s really a lot of stories I could tell you. I don’t ask for your sympathy nor praise. I made my choices, and love my job. I get to contribute and make a difference in people’s lives everyday. We don’t tare people down in the regular coarse of our work day. Bad apples yeah we one or two but that’s no different than any other work place. But we’re not all bad, mistakes? Yup I’ve made lots but who hasn’t? I hear all the time about Sue Ann Levy saying these terrible things about city workers being lazy and useless and endless insults. We continue our jobs with no real avenue to rebut or have our say. Only a bully picks on those who can not defend themselves. When we fight back against an employer we are in there worst possible position, we are forced to use the only tool available, strike! Yup I said it, I hate the word, I hate the idea of the word! I hate that the only way we have to get the help we need is to cause disruption in the lives of the people that trust in us to perform our work everyday. We hurt ourselves in our fight to be heard most of all. For most of us we feel a connection with the city. It’s our home too we care about people, we care deeply about the lives of those we affect daily. Even one day lost affects us all. And yet I hear Sue Ann Levy constantly rant and rave about us like we are a big bad corporation bent on raiding the piggy banks of public. We’re people, people the go to work in some of the hardest a sometimes very dangerous jobs. Garbage workers, sewage treatment plants, EMS, the list goes on. Again I ramble on if you’ve read this far I thank you for your indulgence. I we are not there at work everyday the city would change drastically. I will ask one thing…if Sue Ann Levy misses a day how that affect your life? Let’s make the world a better place one day at a time…without the mindless rantings on an ex city employee who is so bend on revenge on her former employer for terminating employment for incompetence.
I used to be a SAL fan years ago but she has decended to such a depth in her ‘writing’. What was once reasonably thoughtful editorializing is now just shrill, vitriolic rantings unworthy of even a tabloid like the Sun. How she continues to justify a pyacheck is beyond me.