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Rob Ford's Toronto

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I call or email my Councillor is there is something really, really important for her to know or if I'm really, really desperate and cannot get help elsewhere. Not the Mayor. I don't want him over-stepping my Councillor or sticking his nose in where it doesn't belong.
 
toros said:
Not surprised to hear that - Robyn doesn't speak well at all in interviews.
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Fair assessment of the book---it feels workmanlike and a bit superficial. Not surprising. It was written in a hurry and I doubt it went through much of an editorial process.
 
Oh, and some questions I'm not sure if have been answered;

Is Tavner in total charge of 23? Like, can he "make things go away" for "family friends"?

Was it a complete coinkydink that A. Smith was at 15 Winsor with RoF?

Any word on Riinse or Jasmin? Surely, Jasmin would be someone the cops want to chat with.

Could the survailing cops have collected some of RoF's piss to test for DUI to charge him with later?

Who benefits from his pet projects like casinos, subways, land sales and garbage?
 
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SFO said:
Fair assessment of the book---it feels workmanlike and a bit superficial. Not surprising. It was written in a hurry and I doubt it went through much of an editorial process.
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Agree. Compared to Lawrence Wright's exposé on Scientology (which I read recently), Crazy Town comes across poorly. Granted, Wright had more time, richer subject matter, and New Yorker researchers/editors at his disposal; still, Doolittle could have done better.

Anyway, UT regulars are probably not Doolittle's target audience. As a sort of introduction/summary of what Ford is all about, the book is fine.
 
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Crazy said:
Agree. Compared to Lawrence Wright's exposé on Scientology (which I read recently), Crazy Town comes across poorly. Granted, Wright had more time, richer subject matter, and New Yorker researchers/editors at his disposal; still, Doolittle could have done better.

Anyway, UT regulars are probably not Doolittle's target audience. As a sort of introduction/summary of what Ford is all about, the book is fine.
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I've skimmed a bit in the bookstore, but I did notice that the first excerpt in the Star really needed some copy editing. It wasn't always clear when she was describing what was happening on one day versus a flashback. It's a rush job, definitely, and I wish they had waited the extra month as originally planned to release it.
 
Crazy said:
Agree. Compared to Lawrence Wright's exposé on Scientology (which I read recently), Crazy Town comes across poorly. Granted, Wright had more time, richer subject matter, and New Yorker researchers/editors at his disposal; still, Doolittle could have done better.

Anyway, UT regulars are probably not Doolittle's target audience. As a sort of introduction/summary of what Ford is all about, the book is fine.
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Meh, I'm not speculating on whether Doolittle was capable of writing a better book. Just saying I'm not surprised with the results considering the crazy timeframe---I think any writer would turn around a workmanlike book under those circumstances.
 
maudlin said:
They call that the extended clip, but it's only 6 minutes, which was what was originally broadcast. The CC version includes the extra material, such as why we can't recall him.
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Oh, you're right. That's interesting. Someone must've goofed up and mislabelled the clip. I've seen it happen on the CTV/Comedy Network site before, clips are out of order and mislabelled, sometimes the clips are corrupt and won't play and immediately skip. Maybe an unpaid intern does the uploading and he's a bit hung over today.

Sorry for the confusion I suppose.
 
During his mayoralty these are the times he's called in city staff that I'm aware of:

- to fix the road in front of Deco prior to their anniversary celebrations
- to a meeting with a customer of Deco's who was being charged with dumping effluent in a creek
- to find a bus for his football team during a rainstorm
- to look at some pile of sand in someone's backyard

He's been doing many look-sees at apartment buildings lately, but I haven't heard of any meaningful followup.

When I've attended council meetings or other city events I see many councilors greeting and chatting with citizens. You can see they have familiarity - they've worked with them on concerns before. Not Ford. All I've ever seen him do is awkwardly hand business cards to people. I guess Ford supporters would tell you that the other councilors are dealing with activists while Ford is responding to taxpayers. But the others look like real people to me. My guess is that other councilors are dealing with more real world problems in their wards than Ford ever has. But they haven't spent years on talk radio crapping on everyone else's efforts while overstating their own. I could be wrong in my assessment of this. But I hope if Doolittle is going to offer this everywhere as an explanation for his popularity, she has done the legwork to prove to herself that it is true.
 
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Interestingly, in the Globe today they quote KWT's dead-on "morality police" comments, but leave out entirely the bit about Dougie allegedly having been a hash dealer (per earlier Globe reporting). The Star left that bit in when they reported her comments, qualifying parenthetically that Dougie denies the report—why couldn't the Globe do the same? Are they actually that worried about a lawsuit? Very timid of them; don't forget, they sat on the Dougie-hash story for eighteen months before running with it.

And Kristyn Wong-Tam, the only openly gay councillor at City Hall, said Doug Ford’s comments were “outdated” and “playing on homophobic slurs.”

She said “those who live in glass houses should not be throwing stones,” referring to Mayor Ford.

“If the morality police were to descend on the mayor’s office or home, what they would find would be a man who’s admitted to crack cocaine use, to alcohol abuse, allegations of sexual harassment [unproven claims in a police document that Mr. Ford has flatly denied] … well-documented incidents of drunken outrage and public urination, and the cultural appropriation of a Jamaican accent. So if there was to be a contest in morality between the mayor and the LGBT community, I think the mayor would lose.”
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euler said:
I was once interviewed for a few news segments and even though I thought I was perfectly composed, when I saw the segments I looked completely out of place to an embarrassing degree. It's really hard! People who are always on TV really are professionals in more ways than one.
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I agree that being good at being a meat puppet requires a certain kind of talent, but a meat puppet is still a meat puppet, and at least Dolittle's an actual journalist and not just a meat puppet.
 
blackballed said:
People realize that he wasn't ticketed for crossing a residential street in a leafy suburban neighborhoods, right?

Loughead (aka. Highway 7) and North Road is a major and dangerous intersection. The speed limit is at least 80. The Toronto equivalent would be something like the Queensway and Islington.

And they don't ticket you for jaywalking if you stray a bit outside the crosswalk. My guess, having grown up nearby, is that he was a danger to himself and others.
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I'm going to out on a limb and say that Ford wasn't ticketed for jaywalking so much as for being a loud, drunken asshole and drawing attention to himself.
 
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