“I’ve changed the culture down here. You don’t hear about the scandals anymore… I mean, a money scandal.”
-Rob Ford
I'll admit it. I'm a sleazy voyeur. Apparently I am completely incapable of getting enough of this train-wreck of depravity. Fortunately, it seems that many others are in the same boat I am.
I'm talking, of course, about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's horrific meltdown as a politician and as a human being. It's like watching a Jerry Springer episode except way funnier because it's not staged. And like Jerry Springer, it makes the viewer feel bad about themselves.
I'm not gonna lie. I am taking satisfaction in watching this law-and-order champion get exposed as a crack-smoking, drunk-driving hypocrite. The German's call it Schadenfreude and it refers to the pleasure one takes in watching another's misfortune. It's not a good thing for the soul and I hate myself for it. But, I also don't think I'm going to stop feeling it until he's off the front pages and I don't think that's gonna happen until this train has finished cartwheeling off the bridge, over the cliff, and into the red-hot magma core at the center of the earth.
First, let's take a quick look at who Ford is and how he came to be mayor of the fifth most populous city in North America. It's probably worth noting that I'm just stealing this basic background of Ford from Wikipedia so if any of it is incorrect, please feel free not to give them any money during their next donation-drive.
In 1969, Robert Ford was born in Etobicoke, a wealthy area of Toronto, Ontario. He was the youngest of four children and his parents had founded Deco Labels and Tags, a grocery packaging company with annual sales estimated at $100 mil. Ford would become a football enthusiast and his parents would send him to train at the camp of the Washington Redskins and at the University of Notre Dame. He would then go to Carleton University where he made the football team and studied political science. Unfortunately, he would not play any games and went back to Toronto without getting his degree.
Ford would then get a sales job at his parent's company and get married to high school sweetheart Renata Brejniak in 2000. He would continue being involved with football by coaching at Newtonbrook Secondary School in 2001 until he was dismissed for a dispute with a player. He would then coach at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School until earlier this year when an interview, unrelated to his current scandals, got him dismissed. Essentially, he was saying that many of the Eagles players, the team he coached, are from broken homes and gangs and only go to school thanks to football.
In 2000, Ford would get elected to city councillor of Etobicoke North, ironically with the endorsement of his later arch-nemesis, The Toronto Star. He had lived in this ward, with a 53% immigrant population and a reputation for gang violence, until his marriage in 2000. He would go on to hold that ward convincingly with 80% of the vote in 2003 and 66% of the vote in 2006. In 2010, he would run for mayor and be elected with 47% of the vote.
His political platform the whole way along has been strongly fiscally conservative with an emphasis on reducing taxes, beating back public-sector unions, law-and-order, and minimizing government while making it more responsive. He would often attack his fellow councillors on their spending habits and was not well liked by the political establishment. To demonstrate that he was different, he reduced his councillor office's spending to basically zero and would respond rapidly to the public's complaints and even give out his personal phone number to constituents. He was essentially swept into office on a wave of resentment aimed at government-employee privilege with his primary plan of "ending the gravy train."
As mayor, Ford has stated that "I've saved a billion dollars." Quite a claim to be sure. Is it true? Well, not completely although he has certainly honestly attempted to cut costs where he could. Taxes were cut by $200 million in the form of getting rid of a license registration fee. This isn't technically saving money since it's cutting revenue instead of spending but it does fit with his promises of less taxes. However, he contradicts himself when he then adds a savings of $24 million via increased user fees which is a tax increase. It's understandable that he wants the sound bite of being able to say he saved a billion dollars but you can't really have it both ways.
Regardless, reaching a billion is just an arbitrary goal anyway. Any sensible savings are good for a city in the red. He cut $6.4 million from councillor and mayoral office spending. Over seven years, he hopes to have saved $78 million by contracting out garbage collection. He will have saved $89 million from renegotiated public-sector contracts and $606 million from random "efficiencies" found. While columnists have dissected this and demonstrated his numbers are fairly exaggerated, he has been the necessary swinging pendulum that forces the efficacy of programs and spending to be re-evaluated. This rebuilds the faith in the city's politicians which was obviously lacking since they, ya know, elected Rob Ford.
Now to be honest, I like everything about Rob Ford that I've written so far. His love of coaching speaks well of him, even if he was sometimes leaving work early to do it, and his smaller-government mentality was exactly what was needed to combat the massive deficits the city was running. However, his lack of education and wealthy, somewhat entitled upbringing would hurt him later on with some bizarre statements that really polarized people.
In 2006, Ford was angry about the city spending $1.5 million preventing the spread of AIDS. At one point he said: “It is very preventable. If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn’t get AIDS probably, that’s bottom line.”
However, the UN's statistics have demonstrated that the majority of people who get the disease are actually heterosexual, non-drug users. When told it was primarily women who get it, he responded: “How are women getting it? Maybe they are sleeping with bi-sexual men.”
Not a great response. It seems to be something someone would say who has heard about the issue but personally knows nothing about it beyond stereotypes. And honestly, if you don't understand an issue, you shouldn't be spouting stuff about something so serious until you've done some research.
In 2008, Ford would stick his foot in his mouth again with this gem: “Those Oriental people work like dogs. They work their hearts out. They are workers non-stop. They sleep beside their machines. That’s why they’re successful in life. I went to Seoul, South Korea, I went to Taipei, Taiwan. I went to Tokyo, Japan. That’s why these people are so hard workers (sic). I’m telling you, the Oriental people, they’re slowly taking over.”
Clearly meant as a compliment but obviously has some problematic racist overtones that most people recognize instinctively. Concerningly, Ford didn't.
And I guess that's the problem. Ford's ideology was what was necessary for the time but I don't think he was necessarily the person to deliver it. He was a rich kid who dropped out of school to get a job at his parent's company. He grew up in a bit of a bubble where actions didn't have consequences. There was a piece in The Globe and Mail that investigated the youthful antics of Rob and his siblings and found that the groups they ran with were prone to the types of drug and wealth-fueled recklessness that is usually associated with George W. Bush and Lindsay Lohan.
Rob's brother, Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford, has been identified by old acquaintances as a bulk-hashish dealer in his youth. He and his friends would refer to themselves as the RY Drifters after the Royal York Plaza strip mall they would regularly hang out at. Troublingly, sources have suggested that this group did more than the typical teenage drug experimentation with at least ten of these Drifters winding up as heroin addicts and some even engaging in burglaries to feed their habit.
Rob's other brother, Randy Ford, was also a known dealer and would later get arrested for beating and kidnapping lower-level dealer Marco Orlando for outstanding drug debts. Randy and friends tried to ransom Marco to his parents for the money owed but instead got busted when the parents called the cops. Randy was charged but it is not on record how the case was resolved. A cash settlement is possible since no jail time was given.
Rob's sister Kathy also has some troubling history. In 2012, her long-time boyfriend Scott MacIntyre, a convicted cocaine dealer, was charged with threatening to kill Rob. In 2005, Scott and another guy were accused of shooting her in the face during an altercation in her parent's basement. They got her to the hospital and Scott fled in his mom's Jaguar. Scott wasn't charged although the other guy got in a little trouble for having the handgun. Seven years before that, Kathy was with a white supremacist named Michael Kiklas who was shot and killed by her drug-addicted ex-husband Ennio Stirpe. She was also friends with several other white supremacists, one of whom, Gary MacFarlane, helped start the short-lived Canadian branch of the KKK.
Now no one is suggesting Rob Ford is engaged in drug dealing or linked to white supremacy but it does show a troubling trend in the types of people he grew up with and what he thinks of as normal. Also worth noting is that none of the family ever really got in trouble for their antics. Is this due to the privilege of wealth or simply that they didn't deserve to be in trouble? Hard to tell. However, this all goes a ways to explain why Rob was still involved with hard drugs and reckless partying even after entering politics. Although things have gotten truly nuts since he became mayor, a year prior to being elected councillor, Ford was charged with DUI and marijuana possession in Miami. In 2008, Ford was charged with domestic assault although the charges were dropped due to 'inconsistencies' in his wife's story.
Since then, he has smoked crack with Somali drug-dealers who tried to sell the evidence to a newspaper. Two of those dealers were murdered although that is probably unrelated to Ford. His sometimes driver and suspected drug-dealer Alexander Lisi is being charged with extortion in trying to get the video back. He has admitted to buying illegal drugs, drinking and driving, and often being in drunken stupors like in this video that went viral. His own staff accuse him of hanging out with prostitutes, yelling racist gibberish at a taxi driver, snorting blow, popping oxycontin while partying, and telling a female staffer he would perform oral sex on her.
Just for fun, let's throw out a few of his quotes:
“I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine. As for a video, I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist.” May. 24/13
"Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. But do I? Am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago." Nov. 5/13
“I’ve had a come-to-Jesus moment.”
“I cannot support taxing the taxpayer.”
“I don’t understand. Number one, I don’t understand a transgender. I don’t understand. Is it a guy dressed up like a girl, or a girl dressed up like a guy? And we’re funding this for – I don’t know, what does it say here – we’re giving them $3,210?”
“I made mistakes, I drank too much, I smoked some crack some time. What can I say? I made a mistake, I’m human.”
“This is an insult to my constituents to even think about having a (homeless) shelter in my ward!”
“No, I’m not in any alcohol treatment program, I’m not in any drug treatment program. I have a weight issues. I’ve been training every day.”
“Say your son or daughter just got killed in a car accident and you’re plastered out of your mind at three in the morning. Are you going to be able to handle that?”
-Responding to a question of whether a mayor should be getting black-out drunk.
“My question is, I urinated in a parking lot. What does that have to do with anything?”
“I am a role model.”
Good stuff. In fairness, this is a democracy. The ability to elect a nincompoop is the right of voters. I don't even think he is a bad guy for all the stuff written here. People say stupid stuff. I know people who have drank and driven and have done and dealt hard drugs. I may not respect that aspect of their lives but most are still decent people and if their ideas were good, I would still vote for them.
The problem here is his lies and hypocrisy. Supporting a tough on crime stances while being a criminal is hypocritical. Being for personal responsibility and then lying through your teeth about your actions is also hypocritical. Considering the support that stayed with Ford even as the scandal unraveled, it is hard to imagine he would not have been much better served by being honest about his failings early on instead of playing semantic word games. Ford doing this would also have dealt with the main problem, the fact that the mayor opened himself to blackmail from gangsters. Imagine if the drug dealers trying to sell the tape to The Star and Gawker had instead chosen to blackmail Ford? They'd have had him by the short and curlies and the mayor of Toronto would be owned by drug dealers.
At this point in time, Ford has had his powers stripped by the city council after an overwhelming majority voted to do so. They have been transferred to Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly for the time being. Some people have been arguing that this is illegal or a coup d'etat, that the democratically elected mayor has had his powers stolen in an undemocratic fashion. Ford himself has threatened to sue. In reality, the city councillors were elected democratically and have the power to do this. A poll for last week has 76% of Torontonians wanting him to resign. His attempt at a TV show was pulled after one episode. He is running on fumes.
Most people understand that he needs to go, that this behavior is insane to allow in an elected official who has so much authority. Having him still there makes doing business impossible. Those still desperate to defend the man and keep him because he bugs the 'lefties' are not doing anyone any favors. They are basically saying that "I want a crackhead criminal for a mayor because some people I don't like think it's a stupid idea." It's bad for everyone and is simply divisive for no purpose.
That Toronto elected his views was the correct thing to do. That they elected him to personify them, apparently not so much now that we know about his issues. At this point, he can deal with his addictions and attempt reelection once he gets his nose clean or he can sit it out and let somebody else champion his brand of fiscal conservatism. Currently, by trying to hold on come hell and high water, all he is doing is discrediting his allies and hurting his ideology by association.
In any case, you've been a breath of strange and concerning air Rob Ford. For the good you have tried to do, here's hoping that rock bottom is softer than they say.
AS
-Rob Ford
I'll admit it. I'm a sleazy voyeur. Apparently I am completely incapable of getting enough of this train-wreck of depravity. Fortunately, it seems that many others are in the same boat I am.
I'm talking, of course, about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's horrific meltdown as a politician and as a human being. It's like watching a Jerry Springer episode except way funnier because it's not staged. And like Jerry Springer, it makes the viewer feel bad about themselves.
I'm not gonna lie. I am taking satisfaction in watching this law-and-order champion get exposed as a crack-smoking, drunk-driving hypocrite. The German's call it Schadenfreude and it refers to the pleasure one takes in watching another's misfortune. It's not a good thing for the soul and I hate myself for it. But, I also don't think I'm going to stop feeling it until he's off the front pages and I don't think that's gonna happen until this train has finished cartwheeling off the bridge, over the cliff, and into the red-hot magma core at the center of the earth.
First, let's take a quick look at who Ford is and how he came to be mayor of the fifth most populous city in North America. It's probably worth noting that I'm just stealing this basic background of Ford from Wikipedia so if any of it is incorrect, please feel free not to give them any money during their next donation-drive.
In 1969, Robert Ford was born in Etobicoke, a wealthy area of Toronto, Ontario. He was the youngest of four children and his parents had founded Deco Labels and Tags, a grocery packaging company with annual sales estimated at $100 mil. Ford would become a football enthusiast and his parents would send him to train at the camp of the Washington Redskins and at the University of Notre Dame. He would then go to Carleton University where he made the football team and studied political science. Unfortunately, he would not play any games and went back to Toronto without getting his degree.
Ford would then get a sales job at his parent's company and get married to high school sweetheart Renata Brejniak in 2000. He would continue being involved with football by coaching at Newtonbrook Secondary School in 2001 until he was dismissed for a dispute with a player. He would then coach at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School until earlier this year when an interview, unrelated to his current scandals, got him dismissed. Essentially, he was saying that many of the Eagles players, the team he coached, are from broken homes and gangs and only go to school thanks to football.
In 2000, Ford would get elected to city councillor of Etobicoke North, ironically with the endorsement of his later arch-nemesis, The Toronto Star. He had lived in this ward, with a 53% immigrant population and a reputation for gang violence, until his marriage in 2000. He would go on to hold that ward convincingly with 80% of the vote in 2003 and 66% of the vote in 2006. In 2010, he would run for mayor and be elected with 47% of the vote.
His political platform the whole way along has been strongly fiscally conservative with an emphasis on reducing taxes, beating back public-sector unions, law-and-order, and minimizing government while making it more responsive. He would often attack his fellow councillors on their spending habits and was not well liked by the political establishment. To demonstrate that he was different, he reduced his councillor office's spending to basically zero and would respond rapidly to the public's complaints and even give out his personal phone number to constituents. He was essentially swept into office on a wave of resentment aimed at government-employee privilege with his primary plan of "ending the gravy train."
As mayor, Ford has stated that "I've saved a billion dollars." Quite a claim to be sure. Is it true? Well, not completely although he has certainly honestly attempted to cut costs where he could. Taxes were cut by $200 million in the form of getting rid of a license registration fee. This isn't technically saving money since it's cutting revenue instead of spending but it does fit with his promises of less taxes. However, he contradicts himself when he then adds a savings of $24 million via increased user fees which is a tax increase. It's understandable that he wants the sound bite of being able to say he saved a billion dollars but you can't really have it both ways.
Regardless, reaching a billion is just an arbitrary goal anyway. Any sensible savings are good for a city in the red. He cut $6.4 million from councillor and mayoral office spending. Over seven years, he hopes to have saved $78 million by contracting out garbage collection. He will have saved $89 million from renegotiated public-sector contracts and $606 million from random "efficiencies" found. While columnists have dissected this and demonstrated his numbers are fairly exaggerated, he has been the necessary swinging pendulum that forces the efficacy of programs and spending to be re-evaluated. This rebuilds the faith in the city's politicians which was obviously lacking since they, ya know, elected Rob Ford.
Now to be honest, I like everything about Rob Ford that I've written so far. His love of coaching speaks well of him, even if he was sometimes leaving work early to do it, and his smaller-government mentality was exactly what was needed to combat the massive deficits the city was running. However, his lack of education and wealthy, somewhat entitled upbringing would hurt him later on with some bizarre statements that really polarized people.
In 2006, Ford was angry about the city spending $1.5 million preventing the spread of AIDS. At one point he said: “It is very preventable. If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn’t get AIDS probably, that’s bottom line.”
However, the UN's statistics have demonstrated that the majority of people who get the disease are actually heterosexual, non-drug users. When told it was primarily women who get it, he responded: “How are women getting it? Maybe they are sleeping with bi-sexual men.”
Not a great response. It seems to be something someone would say who has heard about the issue but personally knows nothing about it beyond stereotypes. And honestly, if you don't understand an issue, you shouldn't be spouting stuff about something so serious until you've done some research.
In 2008, Ford would stick his foot in his mouth again with this gem: “Those Oriental people work like dogs. They work their hearts out. They are workers non-stop. They sleep beside their machines. That’s why they’re successful in life. I went to Seoul, South Korea, I went to Taipei, Taiwan. I went to Tokyo, Japan. That’s why these people are so hard workers (sic). I’m telling you, the Oriental people, they’re slowly taking over.”
Clearly meant as a compliment but obviously has some problematic racist overtones that most people recognize instinctively. Concerningly, Ford didn't.
And I guess that's the problem. Ford's ideology was what was necessary for the time but I don't think he was necessarily the person to deliver it. He was a rich kid who dropped out of school to get a job at his parent's company. He grew up in a bit of a bubble where actions didn't have consequences. There was a piece in The Globe and Mail that investigated the youthful antics of Rob and his siblings and found that the groups they ran with were prone to the types of drug and wealth-fueled recklessness that is usually associated with George W. Bush and Lindsay Lohan.
Rob's brother, Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford, has been identified by old acquaintances as a bulk-hashish dealer in his youth. He and his friends would refer to themselves as the RY Drifters after the Royal York Plaza strip mall they would regularly hang out at. Troublingly, sources have suggested that this group did more than the typical teenage drug experimentation with at least ten of these Drifters winding up as heroin addicts and some even engaging in burglaries to feed their habit.
Rob's other brother, Randy Ford, was also a known dealer and would later get arrested for beating and kidnapping lower-level dealer Marco Orlando for outstanding drug debts. Randy and friends tried to ransom Marco to his parents for the money owed but instead got busted when the parents called the cops. Randy was charged but it is not on record how the case was resolved. A cash settlement is possible since no jail time was given.
Rob's sister Kathy also has some troubling history. In 2012, her long-time boyfriend Scott MacIntyre, a convicted cocaine dealer, was charged with threatening to kill Rob. In 2005, Scott and another guy were accused of shooting her in the face during an altercation in her parent's basement. They got her to the hospital and Scott fled in his mom's Jaguar. Scott wasn't charged although the other guy got in a little trouble for having the handgun. Seven years before that, Kathy was with a white supremacist named Michael Kiklas who was shot and killed by her drug-addicted ex-husband Ennio Stirpe. She was also friends with several other white supremacists, one of whom, Gary MacFarlane, helped start the short-lived Canadian branch of the KKK.
Now no one is suggesting Rob Ford is engaged in drug dealing or linked to white supremacy but it does show a troubling trend in the types of people he grew up with and what he thinks of as normal. Also worth noting is that none of the family ever really got in trouble for their antics. Is this due to the privilege of wealth or simply that they didn't deserve to be in trouble? Hard to tell. However, this all goes a ways to explain why Rob was still involved with hard drugs and reckless partying even after entering politics. Although things have gotten truly nuts since he became mayor, a year prior to being elected councillor, Ford was charged with DUI and marijuana possession in Miami. In 2008, Ford was charged with domestic assault although the charges were dropped due to 'inconsistencies' in his wife's story.
Since then, he has smoked crack with Somali drug-dealers who tried to sell the evidence to a newspaper. Two of those dealers were murdered although that is probably unrelated to Ford. His sometimes driver and suspected drug-dealer Alexander Lisi is being charged with extortion in trying to get the video back. He has admitted to buying illegal drugs, drinking and driving, and often being in drunken stupors like in this video that went viral. His own staff accuse him of hanging out with prostitutes, yelling racist gibberish at a taxi driver, snorting blow, popping oxycontin while partying, and telling a female staffer he would perform oral sex on her.
Just for fun, let's throw out a few of his quotes:
“I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine. As for a video, I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist.” May. 24/13
"Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. But do I? Am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago." Nov. 5/13
“I’ve had a come-to-Jesus moment.”
“I cannot support taxing the taxpayer.”
“I don’t understand. Number one, I don’t understand a transgender. I don’t understand. Is it a guy dressed up like a girl, or a girl dressed up like a guy? And we’re funding this for – I don’t know, what does it say here – we’re giving them $3,210?”
“I made mistakes, I drank too much, I smoked some crack some time. What can I say? I made a mistake, I’m human.”
“This is an insult to my constituents to even think about having a (homeless) shelter in my ward!”
“No, I’m not in any alcohol treatment program, I’m not in any drug treatment program. I have a weight issues. I’ve been training every day.”
“Say your son or daughter just got killed in a car accident and you’re plastered out of your mind at three in the morning. Are you going to be able to handle that?”
-Responding to a question of whether a mayor should be getting black-out drunk.
“My question is, I urinated in a parking lot. What does that have to do with anything?”
“I am a role model.”
Good stuff. In fairness, this is a democracy. The ability to elect a nincompoop is the right of voters. I don't even think he is a bad guy for all the stuff written here. People say stupid stuff. I know people who have drank and driven and have done and dealt hard drugs. I may not respect that aspect of their lives but most are still decent people and if their ideas were good, I would still vote for them.
The problem here is his lies and hypocrisy. Supporting a tough on crime stances while being a criminal is hypocritical. Being for personal responsibility and then lying through your teeth about your actions is also hypocritical. Considering the support that stayed with Ford even as the scandal unraveled, it is hard to imagine he would not have been much better served by being honest about his failings early on instead of playing semantic word games. Ford doing this would also have dealt with the main problem, the fact that the mayor opened himself to blackmail from gangsters. Imagine if the drug dealers trying to sell the tape to The Star and Gawker had instead chosen to blackmail Ford? They'd have had him by the short and curlies and the mayor of Toronto would be owned by drug dealers.
At this point in time, Ford has had his powers stripped by the city council after an overwhelming majority voted to do so. They have been transferred to Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly for the time being. Some people have been arguing that this is illegal or a coup d'etat, that the democratically elected mayor has had his powers stolen in an undemocratic fashion. Ford himself has threatened to sue. In reality, the city councillors were elected democratically and have the power to do this. A poll for last week has 76% of Torontonians wanting him to resign. His attempt at a TV show was pulled after one episode. He is running on fumes.
Most people understand that he needs to go, that this behavior is insane to allow in an elected official who has so much authority. Having him still there makes doing business impossible. Those still desperate to defend the man and keep him because he bugs the 'lefties' are not doing anyone any favors. They are basically saying that "I want a crackhead criminal for a mayor because some people I don't like think it's a stupid idea." It's bad for everyone and is simply divisive for no purpose.
That Toronto elected his views was the correct thing to do. That they elected him to personify them, apparently not so much now that we know about his issues. At this point, he can deal with his addictions and attempt reelection once he gets his nose clean or he can sit it out and let somebody else champion his brand of fiscal conservatism. Currently, by trying to hold on come hell and high water, all he is doing is discrediting his allies and hurting his ideology by association.
In any case, you've been a breath of strange and concerning air Rob Ford. For the good you have tried to do, here's hoping that rock bottom is softer than they say.
AS
This is an excellent analysis of the Rob Ford 'situation', and awkwardly hilarious because of the truth of it all... canadian politics FTW!
ReplyDelete