Tag Archives: Christie Blatchford

Do Worry Be Unhappy

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So just what the hell is going on out their on the mayoral campaign hustings? Are we really angry, like spittin’ nails angry, or are we just fine and dandy, cool as a cucumber, happy as clams? To hear Rob Ford and his vocal supporters spew bile, the whole city’s going into the crapper and the people we elect are to blame. Except Rob Ford, of course. In Friday’s Toronto Sun candidate George Smitherman is quoted as saying that he’s running for mayor because he was “… pissed off too” with City Hall.

And yet in NOW magazine this week, according to an exploratory poll conducted in July to track support for a possible John Tory run, 77% of those asked said that they thought “City Hall is on the right track.” Curiouser still, that same poll concluded “that a third of Ford supporters are comfortable with the Miller regime.” We says WHAT?!?

Pbn;oyaehpgPOANnNPOAhpap;oaP]ahhenahgv89!!!!! [Cognitive dissonance!! Cognitive dissonance!!! Does not compute! Danger!! Danger, Will Robinson!!!]

Just what gives?

After a long pause to stare wildly at the screen expecting it to provide me with some sort of credible answer, followed by a wild night of totally out-of-control binge drinking which itself was followed by a 3 course carbo-heavy breakfast to quell shaky nerves and an irregular heartbeat, I am back in front of the computer with what seems as plausible an explanation as any. This is all David Miller’s fault.

If the guy would just run again, just get back in the ring and take his lumps like a man, then everyone would have a real-life, tactile object to hate on. In his absence, they are forced to rail at the darkness, throw shit at the wall to see what sticks or blare outrageous noises and yell about perfectly reasonable things at the top of their voices so that IT ALL SEEMS SO CORRUPT AND UNHEALTHILY FATTENING SLURPING FROM THE GRAVY TRAIN! And none of it has to make a lick of sense.

David Miller not seeking re-election leaves a void in the campaigns of those vying to succeed him, throwing phantom punches at a chimerical bad guy in the hopes of landing a knockout blow against a non-existent opponent. Without him there, they just can’t seem to focus on why it is they want to be mayor of Toronto. Instead, they can only serve up a heaping helping of outrage and indignation, needing constantly to remind voters just how angry we all are.

Of course our blind rage is food that drives the media narrative. It is much more compelling than contentment. This boiling ire on the part of the Toronto electorate can be traced back to last year’s outside worker’s strike, manifested in all its debilitating horror by homeowners having to deal with their own garbage for six whole weeks. Has ever a city been so put upon as we were in the summer of `09? When Mayor Miller and his merry band of labour-loving socialists failed to crush the union into oblivion, sending its members packing and onto the streets looking for ‘real’ jobs, well, clearly he’d lost the war. He caved. Gave in. Handed over the keys to the vault.

None of which was true but that hardly mattered. As far as the press was concerned, the strike and its awful conclusion was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Toronto was on the wrong track, heading for some apocalyptic ending unless our wayward spending spree was stopped dead in its tracks. Reduce taxes! Reduce government! Stop the gravy train!! Remember, voters, you are really, really angry.

Except that, if the numbers from the John Tory exploratory poll are to be believed, we’re not. More than 3/4s of us think City Hall’s heading in the right direction. That’s well over twice the support current front runner Rob Ford has amongst the voting public. And one out of three of the Ford Army is apparently happy with the David Miller administration. So, the focus of their anger is something that they’re happy with… ?!

Does this mean we are dealing with a very vocal minority, kicking up a lot of fuss and generating little more than manufactured outrage, egged on by certain self-proclaimed ‘dumb’ members of the press like Christie Blatchford who routinely fills her column with a laundry list of supposed excesses at City Hall, wallowing in her boastful ignorance about what those numbers actually show? If so, that’s not really a grassroots, populist movement swelling up to demand real, tangible change. If it were, it wouldn’t be marching in lockstep behind a self-serving millionaire blowhole and having its praises sung in the pages of corporate owned newspapers by elitist downtown hacks pretending to be just one of you-alls.

It’s one thing to contend, and try to find compromise, with genuine anger. But anger with no substance? That’s a temper tantrum. It’s irrational and will do little to help alleviate the problems that this city legitimately faces.

Simply being angry is easy. Two year-olds do it all the time. It’s rarely productive and usually only masks what they’re really mad about.

— consciously patronizingly submitted by Cityslikr

The Blatch Keys On Rob Ford’s Success

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Dear Miss Christie Blatchford,

I am writing to you with a rather forward, possibly unseemly, request.

The next time you hold a gathering for your “downtown friends” would it be out of the question to extend an invitation my way? It doesn’t have to be anything fancy like a black tie dinner party although I can still cut a swath in my tails and top hat. It could simply be cocktails and canapés or a few brewskis over some ribs and slaw as those of you in possession of a mess of “blue-collar, working-class, anti-intellectual” bones might partake in.

We are neighbours after all. I do see you from time-to-time, out walking your dog while I’m window shopping at our local Home Hardware. It seems surprising to me that our paths haven’t crossed more concretely sooner. So let’s stop making strange and break some bread together.

Lest you immediately conclude that this is some appeal for a handout, let me be crystal clear that nothing could be further from the truth. It is for your benefit that I offer to foist myself upon you. Having just read your weekend newspaper column (Rob Ford: The Gadfly That Toronto Needs), it strikes me that you are being done a huge and mighty disservice by your so-called “smart friends”. Not to mention that they seem to be dangerously combustible and must be making a mess of your household interior with all the Cronenbergesque head exploding you claim they are prone to.

Allow me the opportunity, Miss Blatchford, as a long time downtowner with an “intellectual stripe”, to respond to your party trick of claiming “to be the tiniest bit on the fence” about Rob Ford’s candidacy for the mayoralty of Toronto. I can assure you that my head will not explode. My knickers will never bunch into “a complete knot” (and not just for the obvious reason of me rarely sporting any).

No, I will simply take the information, calmly and coolly, and respond by telling you why I think you are wrong on almost every level about Rob Ford and about many of us who oppose him. Dispassionately and as courteously as possible, I will endeavour to point out to you the errors of your thinking and why it is, I feel, that any flirtation with candidate Rob Ford reveals both a cold heart and empty head. After all, that’s what real friends do, isn’t it? Tell you the unvarnished truth in order to set you straight and to stop you from making a damn fool of yourself.

Maybe some of your so-called friends are those “gentle arty” types, “aghast at Mr. Ford at least in part because he seems so low rent”. But I am here to tell you, Miss Blatchford, that not all of us stand opposed to Rob Ford based on his appearance or his boorish, sometimes illegal, behaviour. To borrow your devilishly fine turn of phrase, we “don’t give a flying fig” about his physical stature or loutish public outbursts or his seemingly constant run-ins with the law on both sides of the 49th parallel. (Allow me a sidebar if you will: can we ascribe Mr. Ford’s promise to hire 100 new police officers once he’s elected mayor despite a wall of statistics pointing out a decade’s long decrease in the city’s crime rate as an attempt on his part to help reign in his personal excesses? With more cops on the street, there’s a better chance of Rob Ford getting caught before he can get himself into serious trouble. Very noble of him if true.)

No, Miss Blatchford. There are many of us anti-Ford urbanites who aren’t the elitist prigs you make us out to be. Who very happily sit down over beers with irascible folks, unperturbed when they “say something stupid, or do something stupid” even if it is something like getting behind the wheel of a car, legally impaired, and driving off. Damn the bunk mainstream media try shoving down our throats! Sometimes friends do let friends drive drunk.

Rather, Miss Blatchford, we cannot abide the notion of Rob Ford becoming mayor of this city because during his 10 years on council, he fought against many of the very things that might’ve helped those Average Joes he now claims to be defending. Like, for example, the extension of public transit into traditionally under-serviced areas. In fact he stands before us at the head of the polls still lacking any sort of comprehensive transportation plan whatsoever. A plan needed if we ever hope to finally be in good enough shape to start inviting in those 1 million newcomers Mr. Ford presently wants to keep out. As councillor, Rob Ford voted — almost alone – against the planned redevelopment of the Lawrence Heights housing project, siding with – again, virtually alone – the more affluent next door neighbourhood.

It is this faux populism Mr. Ford has unfurled as his banner (and that you help propagate) which elicits much of the enmity toward him from many of us who don’t dwell in the suburbs, Miss Blatchford. Where you see a “pink and porky” businessman, we see a scion of privilege; an inheritor of wealth whose entire political career has been devoted to nothing more than the furthering of his own interests. Low taxes. Low wages. Deregulation. A big wet kiss to the business community of which he constantly brays about being part of. His only nod to the notion of noblesse oblige or giving back, as you more down to earth people might say, is his devotion to high school football. A commendable impulse, to be sure, but a minor repair of the damage he inflicts on society as whole with the heavy-handed neo-conservative, anti-government stance he takes.

See, Miss Blatchford? I said all that without my head coming so much as close to exploding. Maybe it is you who needs to get out more and stop mingling “primarily with others of the same ilk”. Find yourself some new friends.

Or at least, find some friends who aren’t made entirely of straw. You know the sort. Those ingratiatingly spineless types who let you walk all over them in the hopes that you’ll still want to hang out. A one-sided relationship that’s all give and no take, ultimately amounting to little more than a preening illusion of having actually taken part in something of substance.

Surely, Miss Blatchford, you want more from a friendship than that.

So let’s do lunch. Have your people call my people.

Yours in truth,

Acaphlegmic