Tag Archives: Newstalk 1010

Ford Nation Right Or Wrong

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Nothing brings out the morass of illogic, paranoia and dystopian alternate reality of Ford Nation more than an allegation brought against its titular head, Mayor Rob Ford. flyingmonkeysScandal is what they feed off, proof that a vast conspiracy is perpetually at work in an attempt to discredit, humiliate and ultimately topple the duly elected mayor with a mandate from power. These people – everybody who does not whole-heartedly support the mayor – will stop at nothing to achieve their nefarious ends.

Yes, real life like some badly written comic book.

They are the Oz’s flying monkey brigade, just waiting for a signal from their leader to tear an opponent to shreds.

Never mind Mayor Ford’s past behaviour. It does not factor into their reasoning. An attack has been launched against him. Maximum damage must be inflicted upon the transgressor.

I am not suggesting the mayor is guilty of what Sarah Thomson has accused him of. How would I know? strawmanI wasn’t at the event in question.

But for the life of me, I cannot figure out what Ms. Thomson has to gain by making such a false allegation. Media attention? Sure, but to what end? She garners plenty of media attention already – she is part of the media. I’d argue she’s very good at keeping herself in the public eye.

Here’s one theory that was bandied about as I understood it:

A striving but perpetually unsuccessful political candidate makes false allegations of a sexual nature against a mayor in order to generate publicity for herself and discredit him. This will enhance her chances at victory come next election. It is a tried and true tactical strategy that has launched the careers all those other women like… readyformycloseupAnd I’ll pause here to wait for you to fill in that blank as I’m coming up empty in an attempt to provide any actual examples.

While Ms. Thomson has been unsuccessful to date in winning any election she’s run in, this interpretation of events paints someone so desperate to achieve her ends that she will stop at nothing including slander and libel. She’s a media hound. She’s flakey. How did Mayor Ford put it on his radio show today? “I don’t know if she’s playing with a full deck.”

Such a torturous, scorched earth route to get from point A to B when the shortest way would be to look at the mayor’s own past behaviour. Outbursts of public loutishness. Check. Immediate denials. Check. Heavy-handed dismissal of accusers. Check.

Again. That’s not to say Mayor Ford is guilty of what he’s been accused of. How would I know one way or the other? I’m just saying his supporters are working hard to prop up the least likely explanation.

But there are inconsistencies to Thomson’s story! She said she was drinking cranberry juice but somebody else said she was drinking scotch. She said the mayor told him he was alone down in Florida but we all know he went down with his family. hediditShe said she told his staff about his behaviour but his staff said they never talked to her at the event.

In this version of the story, only Sarah Thomson had motivation to lie. No one else.  Not the mayor. Not the mayor’s staff. Thomson just created layer and layers of lies in order to prop up her original lie.

But we have three witnesses! Ford Nation exclaims. Sarah Thompson has none. So case closed. The Mayor is innocent.

Never mind that two of those witnesses, Richmond Hill councillors, Carmine Perrelli and Greg Beros, in no way refute Thomson’s initial claim. Everyone seems to agree that she joined their group after she had her picture taken with the mayor, saying he’d just grabbed her ass. You need proof of that, came the response. So Thomson and her assistant went back to see if they could get a picture of the mayor grabbing somebody else’s ass. The Set Up, as the media subsequently called it.

None of this undercuts Thomson’s original claim.

OK, but what about Jordan Falkenstein, the eye witness who came forward to state that he did not see anything untoward going on between the mayor and Ms. Thomson. setatrapHe was waiting in line for a picture with the mayor when Thomson butted in front of him. So he got a bird’s eye view and can say with absolute certainty that at no time did he see Mayor Ford grab Ms. Thomson’s ass.

Slam dunk!

But imagine if you will, Mr. Falkenstein on the stand in a court of law.

So, there you were, Mr. Falkenstein, waiting for your turn to get a picture with Mayor Ford and this woman just barges in front of you. You’re cool with that, you say. No hard feelings. She then starts talking ‘in a cynical tone’, you say, to the mayor. You don’t hear the specifics and all the while this is happening, you don’t take your eyes off of the mayor’s right hand which you say stayed on her shoulder the entire time. That’s all you’re looking at, the mayor’s hand. You swear under oath that at no time during that entire exchange you diverted your gaze from his hand.

By its very nature, the kind of behaviour the mayor is accused of by Ms. Thomson is surreptitious, intended not to be seen by anyone else. suspiciousorangesProviding someone who says they did not see what was never intended for them to see is a pretty wobbly nail to hang your argument on. Yet it’s being touted as the final nail in the coffin of both Thomson’s claim and political career.

None of this, let me re-iterate, goes to proving the opposite, that Mayor Ford did and said what he’s been accused of doing and saying. It remains his word against her word. But the degree to which his supporters have leapt to his defense and so totally vilified Sarah Thompson is both disturbing and instructive.

For them, his pattern of previous behaviour has no bearing on his present actions. Instead, it’s all about concocting dark motivations of his accusers and demanding explanations from them that they in no way ask from the mayor. It’s almost as if an attack on him is an attack on them. To question him is to question their support of him. If Mayor Ford is capable of doing all the things he’s been accused of doing that would mean that those who supported him made a bad choice. That’s a tough pill to swallow. headinsandNobody likes admitting they might be wrong.

Instead of entertaining that possibility, Ford Nation goes to extraordinary lengths to create the unlikeliest of scenarios where they are right, where they’ve always been right and where they will always continue to be right. In such a world, everyone else has to be wrong. There is no stone of unreason they will not turn, no hypothetical too outrageous to run up the flag pole in order for that reality to happen.

— matter-of-factly submitted by Cityslikr

Every Four Years Whether You Need It Or Not

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What is it with conservatives these days and their loathing of democracy? I know theirs is an uneasy history with the concept but they seemed to have come to terms with it through the last half of the 20th-century or so. But recently…

Republicans in the United States are intent on suppressing the vote in order to try and steal a state or two and secure their nominee the White House. Our Conservatives prorogued themselves out of a couple of minority jams, unable as they were to cope with the parliamentary insistence that you have a majority of the seats before attempting an unimpeded run of the table. Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals in Ontario (conservative in all but their red ties) liked what they saw in that manoeuvre and shut down Queen’s Park in order to conduct a leadership convention, free from the unruliness of two opposition parties that actually hold down a majority in our provincial parliament.

And here in Toronto, Team Ford has gone to war with some of the city’s Accountability Officers who have had the temerity to question the mayor and his brother’s actions. Apparently there can be too much oversight from watchdogs like the Ombudsman and Integrity Commissioner even for an administration that pledged more openness and transparency than any previous administration in history. Of the world. Ever.

What conservatives seem to believe is that, once elected, they are free to do whatever it is they see fit to do until the next election. That’s what they refer to as a ‘mandate’. If you don’t like what they’ve done, then vote them off the island the next opportunity you get. Until that time, sit down and shut up.

Democracy in four year installments. Citizen engagement and accountability to the taxpayers begins and ends with casting a ballot. Any questioning of motives or actions is nothing more than cheap partisan politics, driven only by a refusal to accept the previous election results. Whining not winning.

Thus rigorously supervised, what’s the need for all these political babysitters? A part time democracy only needs part time overseers surely.  “In Mississauga they have one person,” Mayor Ford claimed last week,” a lawyer on retainer, who does all their jobs.” What’s that they say? As goes Mississauga, so goes Toronto. (Although, unsurprisingly, the mayor might not have had all his ducks in a row on that. “[Deputy Mayor] Holyday said Ford may have misconstrued information that he gave him, about a lawyer on retainer as Mississauga’s integrity commissioner. The lawyer has no ombudsman or lobbyist registrar duties.”)

You know what happens when we have too much oversight? Bounds are overstepped. Our elected officials start having their non-public lives over-scrutinized. Like when they host their own Sunday radio talk show.

But the Fords did what talk show hosts usually do: they mouthed off, they were derisive, they personalized their attack. Should a public servant be empowered to condemn elected officials for the manner in which they exercise their free speech?

Errrrrrrr, what the fuck, Globe and Mail?!

What we really should be concerned about is a couple politicians having unfettered media access to foist their highly slanted views on the public, unchecked and uncontested.  “Hi, I’m Rob Ford, that traffic report would have been a lot better without streetcars.” That you let pass and choose instead to lambast the city’s Integrity Commissioner impinging on the free speech of our mayor and his councillor brother to play AM shock jocks?

The thing is, Globe and Mail, the Fords aren’t just talk show hosts although their administration is largely conducted as if they were.  Just because it’s Sunday doesn’t mean their listeners think of them as Humble and Fred and not the mayor of Toronto as his right-hand man. When they — how’d you put it again? — “…ridiculed [Medical Officer of Health] Dr. McKeown’s nearly $300,000 salary as ‘an embarrassment’…” and asked “Why does he still have a job?”, they did so as mayor and councillor not just talk show hosts. To suggest that the Integrity Commissioner had no place to write them up for such ‘a shameful performance’ is astoundingly narrow-minded about the office’s role in the functioning of an open and transparent government.

Still, it isn’t necessary to have an integrity commissioner say as much. It is best left to voters to determine whether the Mayor is exercising his free speech responsibly. Members of council may rebuke the mayor if they wish. And he’s accountable to voters once every four years for his behaviour.

Oh, I’m sorry. You also have an astoundingly narrow-minded opinion of how democracy should work too.  I guess I expected a slightly higher standard from the editors of the Globe and Mail.

— confoundedly 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