Tag Archives: The Grid

Remember, Remember The 26th Of November

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The head is still a-buzz. I cannot say with any certainty if yesterday was the singularly most crazy-assed day in Toronto political history but it has to be a contender. Yes, Mel Lastman once called out the army to help with a snowstorm but… Seriously?

(The day’s events are compiled in our Trilogy of Terror. Part 1, The Ill-Reckoning. Part 2, Is That Phone Call Coming From Upstairs? Part 3, Karen Black’s Crazy Aztec Doll.)

Suffice to say, we’re in fairly uncharted waters here. If anyone claims to know exactly how all this is going to play out, they are full-fledged liars with their bullshitting pants on fire. We’re through the looking-glass’s looking-glass.

As Edward Keenan wrote, none of this should come as any surprise to anyone. “…his [Mayor Ford] obsessing over small amounts of money; his steadfast refusal to pay any attention to details; his belligerent insistence that normal rules and procedures governing ethics and integrity do not apply to him; and his unique ability to inspire a citizen revolt against him.” Everything is as it was predestined to be. Only our shock at it is what’s really surprising.

If the mayor really cared about the welfare of the city he was elected to lead, he’d call it a day. Throw in the towel, admit he wasn’t all that interested in how things turned out and head off to coach football full time(r) than he already he has been doing. That’s just not the Fordian way.

But now, even the Prince of No Principles, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, has jumped ship, resigning from the mayor’s Executive Committee, citing constituent calls and his gut feeling as reasons to maintain his distance from an administration he’s so rabidly defended for over two years. His love for Team Ford was purely conditional. We all knew that. Still, it signals a council free-for-all. The Thumb has become something more of a middle finger.

So today council convenes for its monthly meeting. Owing to the 14 day suspension of Judge Hackard’s decision in order for the city to get its ducks in a row and the mayor time to launch an appeal, there will be an air of uncertainty. Let’s get through all this quickly and quietly. See you again in the new year when 2013 budgets have to be finalized. When we might have some better idea about the whole mayoral situation.

And about noon or so, a parade will arrive outside City Hall at Nathan Phillips Square to celebrate the Toronto Argonauts’ Grey Cup victory. A parade. For football. At City Hall.

Back in the day, I dabbled in the dark arts of screenwriting. If I had ever delivered up such a script, full of such glaringly obvious analogies and ironies, the critic in my head who sounded a lot like Robert Evans would look at it and say to me, These are the pictures, kid, not a fucking freak show. Go back and write me something believable.

Such is the state of politics in Toronto, late November, in the year of our Lord, 2012. (Give or take).

— still head scratchingly submitted by Cityslikr

Days Of Sue-Ann Supreme

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In future days, will this be the face of the Toronto Sun?

DEVILITATOR

One might argue it already is but I’m referring specifically to the paper’s former editorial page editor, Rob Granatstein’s thoughts on the most recent cuts to Sun Media’s newspaper chain.

The cuts have crushed the local newsrooms. When the latest victims of downsizing are gone, Toronto will be down to three general assignment news reporters, according to people in that newsroom, unless staff is reassigned. That’s flat out ridiculous. The Sun will rely even more on its columnists to generate the news going forward. [Bolding ours.]

The Sun. Columnists. Generating news.

Information flowing forth, free of context, full of personal opinion. News from top down not bottom up.

This isn’t just about it being the Toronto Sun. Any newspaper working with a skeleton crew of reporters and teetering precariously with op-ed writers isn’t a newspaper. It’s, well, an organ of opinion, both informed and otherwise.

It would be just like… All Fired Up in the Big Smoke. Only with inkier fingers.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be able to do whatever it is I do without piggy backing on the work of Daniel Dale, David Rider, Robyn Doolittle, Kelly Grant, Elizabeth Church, Don Peat and a handful of other reporters who tirelessly dig up the dirt and parse information on Toronto politics on a seeming 24 hour, 7 day schedule. I’d hazard a guess neither could the bigger names a couple paragraphs up. The less reporting that gets done, the more, what would you call it?, PRing happens?

Picture Toronto, with the discourse only consisting of the views from the likes of Sue-Ann Levy, Joe Warmington, Royson James, Christopher Hume, Rosie DiManno, Chris Selley, Matt Gurney, Christie Blatchford, Marcus Gee, Margaret Wente?

“Columnists have found themselves out of jobs because they were too agreeable to those in power,” says Granatstein in this week’s Grid profile of Ms. Levy, “and it makes for weak reading. Wearing the Ford colours has hurt Sue-Ann…That means she struggles to get the other side of the story sometimes. People don’t feel she gives them a fair shake.”

While at the moment this may be a bigger bind for Sue-Ann because she’s in so deep with Team Ford, this can be a ditch all opinion writers must fight not to steer into. I’m sure the Star’s Christopher Hume has problems gaining access to the mayor and his staff. His colleague, Royson James, could hardly be considered an honest broker back in the day with the Miller administration. Remember his one-man, moralistic crusade to de-rail Adam Giambrone’s mayoral bid?

But that’s not really why we read columnists, is it? For impartiality or objectivity? We’re looking for opinions. Hopefully ones based on at least a semblance of reason and reality but we certainly don’t view their words as gospel or final on any given topic. Their purpose really is to either make our blood boil or confirm our biases.

Newspapers stressing op-eds over real reporting are nothing more than modern versions of olde thyme pamphleteering. And, if I do say so myself, that’s kind of our bailiwick, over here on the interwebs. We need newspapers to remain newspapers. Otherwise, we’ll all just be making shit up to push forward our agendas, unchecked and unsupported.

— opinionatedly submitted by Cityslikr

Furiously Fast And Loose

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In me the need to talk is a primary impulse, and I can’t help saying right off what comes to my tongue.

— Miguel de Cervantes

A true story…

Which is almost always followed by something only distantly related to the truth, if at all. I know you’re not going to believe this (and you shouldn’t because it isn’t to be believed) but trust me (don’t), this is a true story (it isn’t).

Everything Councillor Doug Ford says should begin with ‘A true story…’ No, wait. ‘This is a true story, folks.’

Earlier this week with Tim Hudak at City Hall to announce the Ford’s the PC’s transit plan (essentially Metrolinx assuming control of the money making portions of the TTC and subways, subways, subways whenever), Councillor Ford complained how he was always getting stuck behind streetcars when driving into work from his Etobicoke home. On Friday, however, it seemed that the councillor suggested he travels back and forth on the streetcar-free Gardiner Expressway and would happily pay a toll to do so if the private sector built a new toll lane.

Either the councillor is making it up as he goes along, scant attention paid to what he’s said previously or as Matt Elliott suggested, we “must confront the possibility that Doug Ford just drives circuitous routes around the city every day, constantly, forever.” Is it that he doesn’t remember the words that spew from his mouth whenever he’s near a camera and microphone or does he simply hope and believe his supporters won’t remember? In the end, I’m not sure it matters. Bullshit is bullshit. It smells the same whether intentional or deliberate.

And when Councillor Ford isn’t filling the air with a litany of nose stretchers, he’s tossing out hyperbolic claims like Mardi Gras throws from the parade float. At Councillor Ana Bailão’s drunk driving press conference, Councillor Ford announced that not only had he not had a drink of alcohol for “20, 30 years” but that he was “..the only person in this whole building right now that doesn’t drink ever.” Add this to the collection of grand claims he’s piled up in the almost 2 years he’s been at City Hall.

“There’s no one that helps black youth more than Rob Ford.”

“I work harder than any mayor ever has.” (Oh wait. Sorry. That was Mayor Ford over-stating. A family trait, I guess.)

“I’ve got more libraries in my area than I have Tim Hortons.”

“We have more libraries per person than any other city in the world.”

Who does that? Who just spouts easily debunked statements as if they’re hard, cold facts? You don’t buy that? Then how about this one?

I know there’s a large degree of the salesman in Councillor Ford. I guess that was his job in the private sector at Deco Labels and Tags. And I get that we’re indoctrinated in the belief that all politicians lie.

Still.

He doesn’t even pretend to be concerned that we might be on to him. That by now, only the die hardest of Team Ford supporters believe a single word that comes out of his mouth.

He says he has 4 daughters. Has anyone actually seen them all in a room together? If so, how do we know he’s not hiding a fifth one away in the attic because having five daughters would be, I don’t know, unmanly?

But if there’s nothing you won’t say in order to prove your point or state your case, how flimsy a point is it, how worthy your case? To fudge facts and fib about such minor things just serves to undermine his arguments on the bigger issues of the day. You say that spending is out of control at City Hall and there’s still tons of gravy to be found? You can’t even come clean about the route you take home.

Cervantes’ knight-errant, Don Quixote, wandered in a fog of delusion because he believed too much in the books he read and not enough in the real world around him. He dreamed of the possibility of a more perfect world, a more just world. His was a noble lie.

Councillor Doug Ford can’t stop uttering nonsense it seems because he just likes to hear himself talk.

— truthfully submitted by Cityslikr