Oh, Mayor  Rob Ford. Won’t you be my valentine?

I just love you to bits. I can’t stop thinking about you. You and your funny little selfless ways of sabotaging your own career. It’s almost as if you don’t want me to lift so much as a pinkie to help out on that self-destructive adventure you’ve undertaken. Such the strong, silent type, determined to go it alone on that journey of diminishing expectations. So brave. So… lone wolfish.

If it’s not fending off conflict of interest charges or allegations of campaign finance improprieties, you simply take a powder at 330 every day it seems. Or ‘private time’ as you like to call it, immediately bringing to mind that euphemism for taking a dump. Just like Elvis Presley’s famous last words. “I’m goin’ up to do some readin’.”

Well done, on a whole bunch of fronts. It’s just doesn’t get much less mayoral than that, Mayor Ford.

And while you were otherwise engaged last Friday, the city got buried under more snow than it’s seen in about five year and slowly ground to a halt. Cars throwing out the anchors willy nilly. Streetcar stopped in their tracks behind them. Plows caught in between.

You?

Call me, folks. Call me any time. I’ll take time out of my private time to sort it all out for you. Call me.

What more could we ask from a mayor who has such a dim view of the efficacy of government? Leadership? In the face of such blunt force from Mother Nature, what was there to do except take some private time and field telephone calls. It’s not like there were any other options. Only the Russians can control the weather (and maybe the Chinese now). For the rest of us, snow was going to snow regardless. Hunker down until it blows over. Let the subsequent thaw sort it out for us.

Now, that’s customer service and respect for the taxpayer!

And it’s what I love most about you, Mayor Ford. You either don’t realize the glaring conflict at the core of your political philosophy or you simply don’t give a shit. Just paper over the competing inconsistencies with a pledge to answer or return every call that gets made to you. Four, five hundred a day. Does the actual number really matter in the end? You’re on the phone a lot even when you shouldn’t be like during those times behind the wheel of a vehicle but, you know.. the smooth running of the city shouldn’t stop just because you’re driving home.. mid-afternoon in order to avoid the real craziness come rush hour.

Mayor Ford, my TOpoli valentine, let me just say I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anyone as passionately disinterested in their job as you are. There’s no issue so complicated, no burning matter so important that can’t be dealt with in one simple phone call. Our Mayor 3-1-1. While the rest of the city and region wrestle with and argue over ways to fund a long overdue transit expansion, you lope along, solving the city’s problems one pot hole at a time. One pot hole at a time.

This is what you call a ‘mandate’.

And the best thing about your performance to date, Mayor Ford, is that not only are you undermining this mandate you self-declared, reducing it day in and day out to what it always was: sound bite simplicities, you’re setting the bar impossibly high for anyone contemplating following in your footsteps.

Going forward, more people are going to question the slogan of reducing revenues while not reducing services. Really? You think you can do that? Let me see your numbers.

Going forward, politicians might think twice about the winning strategy of adopting the divisive, urban/suburban politics that have served you so well. Really? Subways? How’s that going to help me now or in the near future up here in Rexdale?

Going forward, taxation might not be such a dirty word since you’ve come up with no feasible alternative for the proper running of this city. Really? Repeal the LTT? How do you propose to fill that budget hole?

So here’s a heartfelt Happy Valentine’s Day to you, Mayor Ford, and a hearty thank you for burning down your house and salting the earth that it was built on. For only the most misguided of right-wing populist politicians will dare try to trod down that poisonous, pandering path any time soon. It is the surest route to irrelevancy.

— xoxoxoxoxoly submitted by Cityslikr