Evenings at the Kinsella household
In Sunday’s Sun: the most famous Canadian of our lifetimes
NEW YORK — The first thing you notice about this city’s new mayor is that he is pretty tall — six-foot-five, according to official reports.
Oh, and he doesn’t smoke crack. Or drink while driving. Or get identified as an alleged heroin user in police documents. Or use gutter language to describe his wife. Or show up to work mid-afternoon, or not at all.
No, Bill de Blasio is on time, sober as a judge, and clearly in love with his wife (he says so, just after getting sworn in). He is posing for photographs with hundreds of New Yorkers who have waited in line for three hours, in sub-zero temperatures, to meet New York City’s just-inaugurated 109th mayor. Among them, two bemused Canadians.
Shaking his hand, I indicate the army of lobbyists, politicos and job-seekers queued up to meet him.
“We’re Canadians,” I tell de Blasio. “We’re the only people here who don’t want something from you!”
De Blasio and his staff laugh at that one. Not missing a beat, de Blasio says: “Canadians? From Ontario?” We nod.
“I love Ontario! What a beautiful place!” de Blasio booms, sounding like he means it. Then, he pauses.
“I won’t be talking about your mayor,” he says, and his staff burst into peals of laughter. We exchange a few more words, and then slink away, our humiliation complete. A New York Times reporter follows us, to ask questions about Mayor Bill de Blasio and Mayor … well, you know.
Be under no illusion, Canada: Rob Ford is now the most famous Canadian of all time. And you, like us, will be hearing about Mayor Crackhead — and mocked because of him — for many, many years to come.
More than Terry Fox. More than Celine Dion. More than William Shatner. More than just about any Canadian you care to mention — last year, this year, and in years to come. Rob Ford is the Canadian who non-Canadians know best.
Many, of course, are appalled by the tales of crack and the videotapes in which Ford talks about “killing” someone, or denigrates gays and minorities.
But, mostly, they think it is screamingly funny that (a) he exists and that (b) Canadians — these polite, taciturn, apologetic people of the North — elected such a schmuck in the first place. And that we are seemingly incapable of removing Ford from office. Or, worse, indifferent to him.
People from other places are used to public servants who, you know, serve the public. Not serial liars who are off doing hard drugs with gang-bangers when they are supposed to be at work.
Take de Blasio, for example. His entire adult life has been dedicated to public service, and to a determination to erase America’s yawning racial and income divide.
He achieved high office by pledging to bring people together. And by promising to make New York one city, not two — one increasingly rich, one increasingly poor.
Rob Ford, the millionaire’s son who drives a monster car that exceeds most Canadians’ annual income, could not be more unlike Bill de Blasio (or Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi, or Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson). He is lazy, he is dishonest, he is an embarrassment. He divides, he doesn’t unite.
Toronto is New York run by the Swiss, the actor Peter Ustinov once famously said. If that is so, how can Toronto voters vote for Rob Ford — and New Yorkers elect Bill de Blasio?
It is an enduring mystery. Because he is a populist, some say. Because he tapped into suburban anger, others say. Because he ran a campaign that had one simple message, and not a hundred.
One thing, however, isn’t a mystery at all: Rob Ford is the most (in)famous Canadian ever.
And you will be hearing about him, and feeling embarrassed about him, for the rest of your natural life.
Big news, delayed
I said back in August that a big, big change is coming for Yours Truly. It still is. It’s just taking a long, long time. Sorry about that.
Now, please wildly speculate in comments as to what it might be about.
As a hockey parent
Hockey parents are mostly folks who just love their kids, and who get up at crazy hours, drive treacherous winter roads, and shell out money they don’t sometimes have to get their kids to a game. When they know their kid will never, ever be in the NHL.
I therefore feel so sad and angry for this women’s family. Every killing is horrible and senseless, but this one has been particularly horrible and senseless.
Toronto needs a mayor: the Mayor Crackhead timeline
To win, this SOB needs you to forget some or all of his many crimes and misdemeanours. There’s plenty of them, so he actually has a shot at that.
As he registers this morning (showing up on time for a work-related thing for the first time ever) to be a candidate in this years’s election, here is just one of the helpful timelines to help you recall who Rob Ford really is.
Read it, and remember.
In which we score the first interview with Bill de Blasio about Rob Ford
Old posts
Old posts are archived and available on request.
In the last Sun of 2013: my last column
…in 2013.
Happy New Year, all of you. Be good to each other, as my Dad would say.
NEW YORK — New Year, new mayor.
As the political classes survey the year that lies ahead, they should consider Bill de Blasio, the guy who is being sworn in as New York City’s mayor Wednesday.
De Blasio’s triumph was considered improbable, impossible.
But it offers a few lessons for Canadian politicians wishing to improve themselves — and their fortunes — in the new year. When he announced his candidacy for New York’s mayor just under a year ago, there were no less than nine candidates seeking the Democratic Party’s nod.
De Blasio barely registered. His support was in the single digits. And when he announced, one media organization showed up to cover it. He had little staff, and even less money. When he ran ads, towards the end of the race, de Blasio could only afford to do three.
His opponents had big names and big money, and they could get outfits like The New York Times to cover their every utterance.
De Blasio didn’t have any of that. What he had was a message, and a determination to tell it.
He also had a past that many thought would obliterate his chances to be considered a serious candidate. While he had previously been New York City’s public advocate (sort of like an ombudsman), de Blasio — a trade unionist, a community organizer — had also been a committed leftist.
He had travelled to Nicaragua in the 1980s to help distribute food and medicine, and ended up an open admirer of that country’s ruling Sandinista party.
Back then, the Marxist Sandinistas were detested by the Reagan administration, and they demonized anyone considered soft on the Sandinistas. De Blasio didn’t care. Back home, he raised funds for them.
When the cutthroat New York media unearthed all of this, they gave it front-page treatment and clearly expected it would signal the end of de Blasio’s unlikely campaign. It didn’t.
De Blasio didn’t run from the controversy, he embraced it. “It was very affecting for me,” he said. “They were, in their own humble way, in this small country, trying to figure out what would work better.”
The Sandinista revelation didn’t hurt de Blasio. Nor his arrest — which came in August, when de Blasio was handcuffed for protesting the closure of a hospital.
Nor when he went after the city’s powerful police force, saying he would end the department’s racist “stop and frisk” practice.
And nor was de Blasio hurt when — in this, the city of Bloombergs and Trumps and Rockefellers — he said he would tax the rich.
Sounding very much like an Occupier, de Blasio said there was too much of a gap between the rich and the poor. If elected, he planned to do something about it. He even ran an ad about it, over and over.
So they elected him in a landslide. Despite the opposition of the political chattering classes, despite the contempt of the mainstream media, de Blasio won big.
As they get ready for a new political year, Canada’s politicians should pay heed.
The lesson: Being true to yourself — and sticking to your narrative — matters most.
Don’t fear the elites, and don’t pay much heed to the media. If you have a story, tell it, with your head held high.
And, who knows? You just might become a legend in your own time, like Bill de Blasio will Wednesday, here in New York City.
To George and his kids
Canada’s gift to the world: Rob Ford makes CNN top ten scandals list
What an asshole.
