Tag Archives: John Oakley

A Collective Madness

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There was a fleeting moment during the Shit Show Spectacle that was this week in Toronto politics.

dougfordA shot of the mayor’s brother, Councillor Doug Ford, as he watched the police chief’s press conference that confirmed the existence of the video as described in the media purporting to show the mayor smoking what seemed to be crack, uttering racist and homophobic slurs. The proverbial smoking gun, now up against this administration’s head.

Despite my views of Councillor Ford as a detestable politician and, by extension, probably a disagreeable person, I assumed there must be some human feelings contained within. This couldn’t be easy. From a political angle, everything he’d been working for, any future he might be contemplating, now in jeopardy, under dark, dark clouds. Personally? Confirmation that his little brother was battling serious demons.

Fuck it. It made me just want to hug the guy. awkwardhugSorry man. This must really, really suck.

But the sympathetic feeling passed at about the time Mayor Ford emerged from his office, brother Doug at his left shoulder, to announce that there was no reason he knew of why he should resign. Everything’s fine. Anything else?

Then Friday morning brother Doug took to the airwaves to challenge the police chief to produce the video and back their lawyer’s earlier assertion that the police chief ought to be the one to resign since he was the one that stepped over the line, talking about the video and, I guess, having put the mayor under surveillance and revealing him to be spending a lot of time with an accused drug dealer and extortionist.

“Like we all have, Johnny over the years,” the councillor told talk radio show host John Oakley, “we use bad judgement sometimes and yes, Rob’s probably used bad judgement sometimes. attitudeproblemI’m just concerned politics are playing a big part in this.”

Rob’s “probably used bad judgement sometimes”? You think? The mayor’s apparently smoking crack and cavorting with known criminals but his brother’s real concern is about the politics ‘playing a big part in this’?

Sure, my brother is prone to bad judgement that leads to bad decisions but, dammit, stop playing politics with it! This isn’t about Rob. It’s about you.

A shocking refusal to accept any sort of responsibility. It’s always somebody else’s fault. notmyproblem1This is probably why the mayor is so obviously sloppy in his public displays of questionable behaviour. He never gets called onto the carpet for it, never faces a reprimand or consequences for his actions.

Especially galling considering the Fords’ usual pro-law and order, never hug a thug stance toward anyone else but themselves or their close associates. For them it’s all about the police stepping over the line, playing politics, acting like judge and jury. Of all the things to be concerned about that came to light over the past few days, the thing Councillor Ford was most concerned about were the police chief’s comments.

This isn’t just about a white hot glowing hypocrisy or double standard. No, no. We’re talking about a complete and utter lack of conscience. There is no ability or requirement to distinguish between right and wrong. Caught with your hand in the cookie jar? Hey. webofliesYou don’t want your cookies stolen, don’t leave them within reaching distance.

“I know one thing, Rob is an honest man,” Councillor Ford told Oakley, “I think that anyone who knows him, knows he is an honest man.” Rob, meaning the mayor, the councillor’s brother, the guy who flatly denied in May there was any video showing him smoking crack, this same video that the councillor was now demanding be released to the public, is an honest man. One of the most honest politicians in the country, Councillor Ford claimed a few days before the truth of the video surfaced.

There’s an untetheredness to reality in these people who lack any conscience. Theirs is an untruthful truth. If they claim someone is honest, it means they’re honest, all the blatant lying aside.

Alice Through the Looking-Glass bordering on the delusional. A shared madness perpetuated by fellow believers that assist in stitching together a collective alternative reality. Witness the Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington’s Mad Hatter act (ironically without his trademark fedora) in defense of the mayor.

“Listen, you’re not going to fool me,” the tough as nails, seen it all journo states. madhatter1“This is a political script to take down the mayor. That’s all this is. There are people who are friends with the chief of police that are using him as a political tool to get their people in.”

Sure, Joe. Whatever. If it’s easier to believe that a police chief is being used as a puppet by some nefarious entities to subvert democracy than it is to imagine a guy with significant substance abuse problems veering out of control (with ample proof to back that view up), have at it. No one can tell you otherwise.

It’s not just crank Toronto Sun columnists. Listen to Ford Nation resident Joy Green stand by her man, believing what she wants to believe and ignoring anything that might undermine that belief. “My support is based on service to this city,” she tells the CBC’s Rick MacInnes-Rae. “I’m sad that this video does exist,” Ms. Green says, “I don’t necessarily believe that anyone can prove that he was foolish enough to partake in something like crack but…”

I accept there is a video of Mayor Ford doing something I don’t believe he’s foolish enough to be doing.

Later on in the interview MacInnes-Rae suggests that we now know why Mayor Ford doesn’t provide a daily schedule to the public. “Because somedays he’s not at the office,” he points out. “He’s out driving around, or has been, with Sandro Lisi. Seems to me, some might argue, that might affect the way you do your job.” seenoevil1“I’m sure some might argue that. You’re correct,” Ms. Green responds. “And you?” MacInnes-Rae asks. “No,” Ms. Green states. “Because?” “Because I don’t know that’s a fact.”

What the mayor and Sandro Lisi were doing during all that time they spent together, in the SUV, at soccer games, convenience stores, in empty parking lots, on the telephone, is, at this point, purely conjecture. You can make a pretty educated conjecture but it would only be that. Conjecture.

What you can’t dispute is that Mayor Ford and Sandro Lisi spent a lot of time together, driving around, hanging out, talking on the telephone. There are pictures and surveillance data to prove it.

Belief, like beauty I guess, is now in the eye of the beholder.

Lying, reality denying politicians like the Fords have salted the earth around them, killing any possibility of a serious, honest debate about all aspects of governance in this city. burntbridgeThose pitching their tents on that ground, political allies and supporters alike, who remain defiant in the face of even the most incontrovertible truth from the most reliable of sources – their eyes and ears – are nothing less than disablers of democracy. This is now about right and wrong not you said, I said. Forget poor judgement or bad decisions, we’re talking a complete lack of ethics and morals.

To refuse to accept or see that makes you not only someone of questionable character but a bad citizen with a destructive bent to inflict irreparable damage on the city you call home.

— sick and tiredly submitted by Cityslikr

Advised: Radio Silence

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So when does any publicity become bad publicity?

The thought came to me while listening to Sunday’s The City radio show with Mayor Rob Ford and Councillor Doug Ford. “Well, you’re married to the Pollack,” brother Dougie said to Rob during their conversation about the Euro Cup. “A term of affection,” the mayor said later, responding to his brother’s apology for using the term which he claimed not to know was derogatory. All would be forgiven in Fordland later over polish sausages and pierogies watching some soccer at the mayor’s house.

Would that be the case, however, outside the family circle?

With The City, Mayor Ford has been given an even bigger bully pulpit than the already impressive one the mayor of Canada’s biggest city inherently possesses. Every week he gets to expound on his political views, his council pet peeves and his one true passion, sports. Except for the last topic, he goes largely unchallenged, tolerating little dissent from any callers who have the temerity to chime in with opposing opinions and filling the guest list with like-minded councillor colleagues.

Why, for example, after last week’s bizarre plastic bag debate at council, didn’t the mayor invite the culprit behind the ban motion, Councillor David Shiner, on to the show to have a further debate on the issue? Maybe he did and the councillor declined. Who knows? But surely one of the 24 councillors the mayor named who voted in favour of the ban was willing to come on the show to discuss the matter.

Instead we got plastic bag loving and part time Ford foe, Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby phoning it in. This, despite the fact, as my colleague Cityslikr pointed out to me, Councillor Lindsay Luby was the real impetus behind the ban when she brought up Seattle as a city that does not charge anything for plastic bags, having been there recently, shopping. You’re right, councillor. Seattle no longer charges for plastic bags, its bid to do so overturned on an election proposition. So as of July 1st, the city will ban plastic bags outright. Councillor Shiner saw that memo passed around council chambers during the debate and ran with it.

Ooops. No matter. The councillor and brothers Ford prattled on, talking up all the benefits of plastic bags and fielding calls from listeners who felt the same.

In the show’s previous iteration, originally helmed by Councillor Josh Matlow, there was an actual attempt to discuss municipal matters from the basic left-right dynamic with the host in the role as the moderate centre. Sure, the set-up was a little cutesy but it brought a substantive dialogue to City Hall proceedings in a much more inclusive way than its bastard offspring. The City versus The City as seen through the Ford brothers’ eyes.

And it is a very narrow, skewed perspective, one that includes ethnic slurs as family nicknames, it seems. If the idea behind getting the Fords a wider audience through a 2 hour, weekly radio show was to circumvent the other, less friendly forms of media in town and get their message out there, unfiltered, the negative repercussions to such increased exposure were probably never fully considered. In the hands of a truly media savvy public figure, there might not be much of a downside but to the gaffe prone, like our mayor and his even gaffier happy brother?

Maybe the constant reminder of just how ill-informed the mayor is on almost every subject outside of sports serves to shore up the basest of his base. He’s just one of us! Maybe the regular placing of a foot in the mouth endears them to those who don’t care for the slick, knowledge based type of politician. As a then councillor, Rob Ford’s regular appearances on AM640’s The John Oakley Show show established his brand and helped develop an audience that followed him to the polls on his quest to be mayor. Maybe Team Ford hopes to keep that loyalty alive and kicking through to 2014.

But is it possible to have too much of a bad thing? While little quirks of character might be endearing in small doses, serving them up in weekly helpings could eventually get tiresome even to the most devoted of fans. “Did he really just say that?” is the response radio shock jocks aim for but is it the sort of result a mayor of Toronto seeks? Despite the emphasis during Sunday’s show on the plastic bag ban and subways, subways, subways, what lingers is The Polock, and brother Doug’s search for an appropriately WASPy soccer team to root for.

Yep folks, them thar’s our mayors, warts and all.

It’s hard to believe that such a continued assault on common sense and common decency can be parlayed into a winning re-election formula. These personality tics often do work when a candidate campaigns as an outsider but after 4 years of being the most powerful elected official in Toronto? It suggests a failure to grow into your role and can only remind voters that they may have miscalculated when they cast a ballot for you the first time around.

— wonderingly submitted by Urban Sophisticat

The Fault, Dear Brutus

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Let’s get this straight right off the bat.

Toronto’s city council is not out of control. It has merely stepped into the leadership vacuum created by Mayor Rob Ford’s misguided, hell bent pursuit of his self-proclaimed ‘mandate’. A mandate now in tatters due to ill-advised blunders like the Port Lands land grab, declaring Transit City dead with no viable plan to replace it and an overarching war on revenue that has put an unnecessary strain on already stressed city coffers.

While the mayor loves to play victim in this, beset on all sides by deranged left wingers (new members of the club now include councillors Michelle Berardinetti and David Shiner… Michelle Berardinetti and David Shiner, people), his monochromatic, black-and-white, us-versus-them worldview has been the actual impetus for his startling loss of control at council. There is no obvious official mechanism in place to strip power from a mayor. A mayor squanders the office’s powers purely through a failure of leadership.

“With limited executive authority,” the Globe and Mail editorialized yesterday, “a Toronto mayor’s power is mostly derived from his or her ability to unite councillors in common cause, or at least broker compromise.” The paper goes on to suggest that, “Rather than embracing his current role as an opposition politician, Mr. Ford needs to find a way to lead again.”

The problem is, the mayor has never led in the sense the Globe would like to see. Uniting or brokering compromise is not exactly his strong suit. What Mayor Ford is truly skilled at is dovetailing his angry sense of privileged entitlement with the anger of those who have truly been left on the outside. Tea Party like demagoguery exploiting grassroots populism in order to divide and conquer.

So every significant loss at council such as the most recent surreal tale of Toronto’s move to ban the use of plastic bags isn’t seen for what it most certainly is. The unintended consequence that results from not having any plan in place past point A. No. Instead it’s portrayed as a petulant fuck you to Mayor Ford by those who remain vigilantly bitter about his successful 2010 campaign. And dissing the mayor is dissing all of Ford Nation.

Was city council’s vote to ban plastic bags unexpected and impetuous? Yes. But it followed its own logic. Everyone agreed that the 5¢ cent fee council imposed – more like, suggested, since it was a bylaw never enforced – had done what it was intended to do. Reduce the use of plastic bags and their presence in our landfills. If that was the goal, why not pursue it to the obvious conclusion? So first Councillor Anthony Perruzza and then Councillor David Shiner pushed for an outright ban.

Toronto will hardly be on the vanguard on this issue if it is in fact enacted in the new year. There has been an international move in this direction for some time now. Countries in Europe have banned them. Peruse this list to see the extent of it in the United States. Hell, deep in the heart of Alberta oil country, the city of Fort McMurray has had a plastic bag ban since 2010.

(Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star gives a thorough breakdown of the implications of the city’s proposed ban here.)

City council merely stepped into the void created by Mayor Ford whose agenda now consists of nothing more than building a re-election platform for a campaign that doesn’t begin for another 18 months or so. The only chaos or anarchy currently swirling around at City Hall is in the mayor’s office. Mayor Ford has left the actual role of governing up to his 44 councillor colleagues. They should be commended not condemned for accepting that responsibility.

— seriously submitted by Cityslikr