Rob Ford.

We need to talk about Rob Ford.

Not Rob Ford the city councillor from Ward 2 Etobicoke North, exiled mayor in re-waiting. But Rob Ford the performance artist. Rob Ford as Dada.

I think most of us here would agree that Rob Ford didn’t make his way into politics in order to govern well or to make a difference. Rob Ford could only be seen to be ‘looking out for the little guy’ if the little guy was in fact Rob Ford and he refers to himself in the 3^rd person.

Rob Ford got into politics for no other reason than to make a name for himself. (Likely too, daddy issues at work although I’m not really qualified to address those.) Politics of personality and protest because, as we know, the squeaky wheel always gets noticed if not oiled.

Style over substance. Bluster trumps brains. Fury-fueled noise signifying nothing but self-promotion.

We know the plan of attack for redemption currently underway. If he can overcome his ill-health, Rob Ford plans to resume his role as outspoken, lone wolf councillor, railing at the excess and nonsense at City Hall. He already has staked out and resumed that position but his diagnosis hangs over everything he does at the moment. But, recovery willing, he’ll be back, hard at it. Maybe even somebody will give him a talk radio segment, his own show hopefully, drive time, where his peeps live.

History repeating.

Here’s the hitch to all that however.

Historically speaking, rarely is any person in the right place at the right time for a second go-around. (Greil Marcus, roughly paraphrased.) Pre-2010, a Mayor Rob Ford was purely theoretical. We all marvelled at the possibilities of such a scenario, some gleefully, others horrified.

The problem going forward for Rob Ford is that, well, he was the mayor already. He proved to be terrible at it, out of his depth and, at times, out of his mind. Drunk, high, blindly furious. It was a crazy ride while it lasted but, in the end, the vehicle wound up wrapped around a tree.

So spectacular was the flame-out that now Rob Ford has to pretend it never happened, make as if he’s always just been Rob Ford, city councillor from Ward 2 Etobicoke North. 2010-2014? Yeah…must have been one of his drunken stupors. Are you perfect?

With every pronouncement he makes, and he gets to make a lot of pronouncements as just some other city councillor from Etobicoke, he talks as if he had nothing to do with the operations of the city over the course of the past 4+ years. Just yesterday, during the debate about the cost overruns and delays of the Spadina subway extension, Rob Ford told anyone who would listen, and unfortunately too many people are still listening, that he wasn’t at all surprised.

“I knew it was going to come out,” Ford told the press. “You hear rumours about it.”

And as mayor, there’s no way you could get to the bottom of those rumours. No way. Uh uh.

“If I would have known about this, I would have been all over it,” he told the media.

If he’d known about it? He was the fucking mayor? All he had to do was ask, throw his weight around a bit. If he’d known about it.

“I totally disagree with you,” Ford responded when asked if he shouldn’t take some responsibility for the problems with the Spadina subway since, you know, he had been the mayor for some of that time.

You might think Rob Ford was disagreeing about having to assume responsibility but could it be that he’s actually disagreeing with the statement that he was ever mayor? Who me? What are you talking about? Mayor of Toronto? Rob Ford? Have you been smoking crack or something?

“I don’t know why people make up stories,” wondered the guy who’d spent most of his time as mayor making up stories.

What we’re building to, of course, is the biggest made up story of all, in the eyes of Rob Ford, that he has ever been the mayor of Toronto. This is operation negation. Erase the past, at least the past 4 years, 2010-2014. The greatest mayor in the history of Toronto? You wish. Maybe in 2018, God and health willing.

Every word he says, every statement he makes is an attempt to alter previous events, to rewrite history. Me? You got the wrong guy. Maybe you’re thinking of somebody else. My brother maybe. We look a lot alike. He was mayor, remember? Yeah, definitely. You’re thinking about him. Rob Ford’s never been mayor of Toronto. Too busy looking out for the little guy, counting every single nickel of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. 2018, maybe. You never know.

The more bad news that emerges, transit cost increases, service decreases, chunks of the Gardiner falling off, TCHC failures, all things that grew worse under his watch, the more Rob Ford will try to convince us he was never mayor. You’re barking up the wrong tree, brother. You got your facts wrong. You’re just making up stories now.

Rob Ford needs to shatter his record as mayor of Toronto into indecipherable shards, smash it out of existence. Push reset, reboot rather than reconsider or re-examine. In that context, everything he says now makes sense, shouldn’t feel at all jarring or inconsistent with reality. Reality is no friend to Rob Ford.

The feeling is mutual, of course. Rob Ford has always been at war with reality. He’s never accepted it, finding it constantly running contrary to his view of the world. It’s so much easier to just shape one to fit your needs. That way, every day is a new day, all your mistakes can be deleted, and the possibility exists that enough people will (once more) think it’s time for somebody like Rob Ford to be mayor of this city (again) and clean this mess up, a mess Rob Ford in no way had any hand in creating.

How could he? It wasn’t like he was mayor already or anything.

— incomprehensibly submitted by Cityslikr