Rob Ford's Toronto

[rm20010]

I wouldn't be surprised to see some type of public meltdown. Maybe not as dramatic as Britney Spears, but something wacky. Unless his family can get him into rehab, but I doubt they can. Probably Doug is the only one who could manage that.

Prediction: Rob Ford melts down.

Doug Ford beats up a reporter and is arrested for assault.

Rob Ford really melts down.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

 

[PinkLucy]

Is there anything in the document that mentions Doug Ford? The moment he said he had never met Lisi before I - and everyone else - was calling BS. I won't be fully satisfied until Doug gets taken down too.

Why was Rob buying from Lisi? Is Doug not dealing any more? Or did he know the extent of Rob's addictions and had cut him off? Curious.

 

[kicked it in the sun]

it really is a shame that rob ford has injected such a divisive, vitriolic serum into our politics that we'd cheer his utter implosion. like, everyone loses with this saga, it has truly debased the discourse and brought out the worst in everyone, progressives were unwittingly drawn into his crazed style of scorched-earth, paranoid, zero sum politics. but aside from the madman rob ford finally leaving office in disgrace, the only win here is that his sort of bombast is unlikely ever to be successful again city-wide and that maybe the city will get back to normal. otherwise, we're left with a poorly educated, emotionally-stunted, needy, hardcore substance abuser WITH BAD POLITICAL IDEAS who has spectacularly collapsed in public, and if it weren't that he perished as he lived, i'd feel profoundly empathetic toward the man.

 

[Lansdude]

Can't say I'm surprised. In a way it is similar to the birther movement in the US. We've seen the birth certificate, yet there are still those (mostly racists and/or mentally ill) who continue to believe he is Kenyan. Once the video is released, there are those who will still believe it is a fake.

I think the closest analogue was when the epistemologically-challenged right kept insisting that Nate Silver and other pollsters were spinning in predicting a tidy victory for Obama and turned to some hick dumbass without any education in statistics to "unskew" the polls. They were stupefied when it turned out the liberal media wasn't making shit up and Romney was indeed destroyed.

Same deal here. A combination of weak minds in an era where people who possess knowledge are considered elitists with agendas and a fragmented media with a radical contingent that pumps up the wattage on the convictions of people who are already incredibly stupid or downright mentally ill.

When these people are finally slapped in the face by the truth, they often turtle and start referring to scripture about tolerance or acceptance or whatever message is sufficiently relativistic that they don't have to be ultimately wrong. Fucking ridiculous.

 

[MetroMan]

Wow! This is so bad ass! Robyn Doolittle in the car with Mohamed Siad watching the Rob Ford crack video!

This puts the cherry on top of vindicating The Toronto Star.

 

[animatronic]

Why was Rob buying from Lisi? Is Doug not dealing any more? Or did he know the extent of Rob's addictions and had cut him off? Curious.

There's no evidence that Doug is still dealing, and the likelihood of him still dealing is quite low. Sounds like it's something he grew out of in his 20s.

 

[animatronic]

Something no one has brought up yet. Ford's habit. How is he going to feed his addiction now? His supplier was arrested. I'm sure he's got a stash but that won't last forever. Who's going to supply him now? Will he increase his alcohol intake? Will he be walking around City Hall dealing with withdrawal issues? The coming days and weeks could be very interesting.

Well, seeing as how he met up with Lisi four times a week he probably has one day of product left.

 

[Hipster Duck]

it really is a shame that rob ford has injected such a divisive, vitriolic serum into our politics that we'd cheer his utter implosion. like, everyone loses with this saga, it has truly debased the discourse and brought out the worst in everyone, progressives were unwittingly drawn into his crazed style of scorched-earth, paranoid, zero sum politics. but aside from the madman rob ford finally leaving office in disgrace, the only win here is that his sort of bombast is unlikely ever to be successful again city-wide and that maybe the city will get back to normal. otherwise, we're left with a poorly educated, emotionally-stunted, needy, hardcore substance abuser WITH BAD POLITICAL IDEAS who has spectacularly collapsed in public, and if it weren't that he perished as he lived, i'd feel profoundly empathetic toward the man.

Warning: Godwin's law to be invoked!

Rob Ford will always be an albatross around Toronto's neck. In 30 years, people will still be talking about him and wondering aloud how a city known for being so progressive and urban-minded and, most importantly, economically ascendant, elected a small-minded bully with known and documented criminal behaviour who rode into power on a personality cult. The parallels to Hitler are unfair, but inevitable. How did a country like Germany, a country known for Kant and Beethoven and social progressivism; a country where Jewish people were better off than perhaps any other country on earth at the time, elect a man like Hitler - a psychopathic bully with known criminal behaviour who would usher in one of the most despicable political regimes in human history?

Germany was a wealthy, powerful, progressive country with industrious tendencies then and it still is today - perhaps even more so. But Germans will always wear the Nazis around their neck. Similarly, Toronto will continue to be an urban, progressive, cosmopolitan world city; one of the best places to live in North America - perhaps even more so, but we will always wear Rob Ford around our neck.

Okay, since I've already used up my Godwin law privilege, I might as well draw some other parallels:

- Hitler still thought he had a 1,000 year Reich when the Soviet tanks were basically on Friedrichstrasse. Rob Ford still thinks he'll continue to be mayor when the Chief of Police acknowledges that he has a crack video. Even though the 2 people are very different in their levels of despicableness, both of them were comparably deluded about themselves. Hitler committed suicide because he would have never resigned. To be somewhat morbid, I don't think our mayor will be led out of office in anything other than handcuffs or a bodybag. If, by some freak miracle, he manages to survive this and then call an election and lose, I think he will claim the results of the election were bogus and try to stay until the cops drag him out.

- Sickeningly, up to a third of Germans still thought that the Holocaust was a good idea in 1946, even when presented with the chilling evidence of what happened in the camps. Despite suffering from total humiliation from a war prolonged by their leaders (many Germans - people who had once owned cars - lived in worse than 3rd world conditions before war's end in 1945), they fought steadfastly even when it was completely obvious that they lost and that it was because of Hitler that they were in the predicament they were in (listen to the "totalen krieg" speech). The same feels true of Ford Nation, looking for scraps of nonsense to defend Ford with, even when the writing is on the wall and everything he promised people was a lie.

Again, I am not saying that Ford was as bad as Hitler, or that Ford Nation is as deluded as Nazi sympathizers were at the end of the war, but the parallels are there. They reveal a lot about human character and our inability to back down, admit defeat or willingness to feel shame.

 

[PinkLucy]

There's no evidence that Doug is still dealing, and the likelihood of him still dealing is quite low. Sounds like it's something he grew out of in his 20s.

Does one grow out of that? He'd still know people, so you'd think he would set Rob up with someone "safe" -- unless Lisi was that safe person. I just wonder if Doug knew how often Rob was meeting Lisi and how often he was in all likelihood using.

 

[Adaax]

NYC had a run of terrible mayors in the 70s and 80s, and they survived. I think that's a less melodramatic comparison to run with.

 

[Johnny Au]

A few decades from now, people reading about Toronto's history would wonder how Rob Ford got elected in the first place.

 

[MisterF]

PL:

Expect terrible attendance the next little while.

AoD

So business as usual then.

Wow! This is so bad ass! Robyn Doolittle in the car with Mohamed Siad watching the Rob Ford crack video!

It must be said - Robyn Doolittle is smokin' hot. Her role in taking down Ford just makes her even more attractive...lol

 

[Hipster Duck]

NYC had a run of terrible mayors in the 70s and 80s, and they survived. I think that's a less melodramatic comparison to run with.

No, those were terrible mayors in the Mel Lastman mould. If they would have been caught doing something criminal, they would have resigned. They didn't openly flaunt their criminal behaviour and they weren't elected on a personality cult. When they were kicked out of office, they didn't have a significant chunk of the population fawningly adoring them and claiming that every transgression they made was a 'conspiracy'. Those mayors never hosted mass barbecues or propaganda radio shows aimed at elevating their personality.

 

[greenegg]

I wonder if decades from now there will be a subway station called Ford station.

 

[DD13]

Am I missing something? I thought the investigation began after the news broke about the crack video. So how do the cops have Doolittle under surveillance? And if the photo comes from elsewhere, why didn't they report it sooner? And where's Metroman?