What’s up with Mayor Rob Ford this week

In an op-ed for The Guardian titled Sadly, Rob Ford epitomises what Canada has become, Matthew Hays writes:

Each time Ford appears in the media, it’s another eerie reminder of what we’ve become: crude, swaggering, bungling, irrational and mendacious. We’ve reached that staggering moment in a brilliant horror film when our protagonist realises the truth: Rob Ford is the New Canada. He is us.

In the article, he points out that Toronto’s mayor and Canada control-freak war-on-science-declaring prime minister are two sides of the same coin. As a reminder of how buddy-buddy they were prior to the various scandals, here’s the short version video that the Tories tried to suppress, in which Rob ford introduces his “new fishing partner” Stephen Harper at his private barbecue:

Here’s the long version:

I have a hypothesis that for every Rob Ford situation, there’s an appropriate Family Guy graphic. For the recent television interview that Lord Conrad Black conducted with our Peter Griffin-esque mayor, there’s this one:

It was, to borrow a phrase from the Globe and Mail, “the death of decency”. Featuring a rich ex-convict fawning over and lobbing softball interview questions a rich likely-future-convict, it sank to unexpected depths when the mayor insinuated that Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale was a pedophile:

“The worst one was Daniel Dale in my backyard taking pictures,” said Ford, “I have little kids. When a guy’s taking pictures of little kids, I don’t want to say the word, but you start thinking, you know, what’s this guy all about?”

Ford continued, saying he “caught” Dale “on the bricks, over my fence, taking pictures. . . . He had cinder blocks that he had to step on to get over the fence.”

A desperate grasp made by a desperate man for whom nothing is too low anymore.

The Star says that Dale was not in Ford’s backyard, not taking photos of the mayor’s children, and not looking over any fence. In fact, Dale was on public parkland near the mayor’s home — working on a story that Ford was hoping to purchase some parkland for his property — when he was accosted by the mayor. Given that what the Star has been saying about the mayor has proven to be true and what the mayor has said about himself has proven to be — ahem — at variance with the truth, I’m more inclined to believe the Star.

Daniel Dale is suing both Ford and Vision TV — the channel that aired the interview — for libel. I hope he wins.

And how much of a Rob Ford love-in was that interview? This much:

Not to be outdone by his brother, Councillor Doug Ford (who often imagines himself to be Toronto’s co-mayor), borrowed a trick from third world politics and handed out $20 bills to people at a Toronto Community Housing complex: