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.
Old posts are archived and available on request.
…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.
What an asshole.
Hi Warren,
How are you?
i hope good.
* If posting to your blog would help get the phone numbers i need, please don’t include my or my parents names or address in your blog post.
My parents are still without power, in toronto. they are 85 years old.
They have been staying in different homes of their kids for the last week.
All of their children are concerned about the stress they are under.
A city tree had a limb come down on their hydro line.
Multiple tickets have been reported to hydro about this.
Hydro will give no information as to when their line will be fixed or where they are in the cue. Hydro said they DO NOT prioritize people based on any vulnerabilities they might have, and as well, the front line hydro person had no idea how hydro
chooses who’s line they will fix next.
This is horrible emergency planning. Hydro needs to fully assess their emergency planning to make sure a better emergency system is in place.
Warren, Do you know how i can find the cell phone numbers of Kathleen Wynne, Norm Kelly, Rob Ford, Hydro Ceo Anthony Haines, Hydro safety person – Ave Lethbridge, or
their assistants or media relations people?
Or a phone number for the right person at hydro to get this sorted out right away. the 416 542 8000 number and related dynamic is useless.
My brothers and sisters and I are very concerned about my parents health and well being, since they cannot go home and have no idea when they will be able to return.
I want to make sure Hydro sends out a truck as soon as possible to fix their line, and get at least a rough ETA as to when this is likely to happen.
thanks for your consideration about this, WK,
MUCH APPRECIATED!
josh X
416 922 XXXX
Not quite. The headline on Stephen Maher’s column, here, bears little relation to what I think he’s saying.
There’s no “new amorality at the heart of public life.” That’s ridiculous. Any of the politicians I know have been shocked by Rob Ford’s crack-smoking, heroin-using, drunk-driving, wife-humiliating ways. They are all, to a one, angry and appalled by Crackhead Mayor. They’re not amoral.
It’s not our political culture that is amoral; if you read what he says, Maher lays the blame elsewhere. He says “our new online media culture is amoral.” He suggests that, now that people are their own news editors, they suddenly have started clicking stories about the Kardashians, not Kafka.
I don’t think he’s quite right about that. There’s nothing new about peoples’ enthusiasm for Rob Ford’s antecedents. They’ve been lining up to see horrible people, and horrible stuff, for a long time: in the Roman coliseum, in the circus freak show, in the old black-and-white National Enquirer – and in the TV reality shows, where bearded racists and homophobes are made into stars.
And, as is well-known, they line up at NFL games to get their picture taken with Rob Ford. They do it for the same reasons they always have: they can’t tear their eyes away from freaks and failures. It’s in their, our, nature.
Rob Ford is a circus freak, just like the bearded lady and the Siamese Twins and the three-legged man were freaks. They’re not necessarily buying tickets to approve of Ford and the other freaks. They’re buying tickets to get close, and even to get the opportunity to mock him.
Is that amoral? Maybe.
Mostly, it says more about the people in the line-up – that is to say, us – than it does about Rob Ford, doesn’t it?
Lala and me are headed to NYC as I thumb this. Tasks:
• See Patti Smith
• Sleep
• Attend de Blasio swearing-in
In regard to that last one, watch this spot. It’s one of the reasons de Blasio won. It’s amazing.
If the plane goes down in a fiery ball, Daughter gets my biker jacket. Sons can divide up the guitars.
And the great Christmas 2013 blackout continues.
As you guys know, I am kind of obsessed with the confluence of disasters and politics. Of such things are political careers made and unmade, I like to say.
Deputy Toronto Mayor Norm Kelly undid his when he decided to jet off to Florida, mid-calamity. Doesn’t matter what the reason was: he is now forever marked by that quick trip.
Mayor Crackhead hasn’t been hurt by any of it, conversely, because he’s stuck around. It’s the Giuliani Effect™, you might say: you can be saying and doing precisely nothing substantive, but if you’re on the news every day, offering soothing platitudes, it can’t hurt. Ford also benefits from rather low expectations: when you’re a crack-smoking, drunk-driving lying sack of garbage, you can only go up, you know?
Kathleen Wynne? Jury is still out. Nobody does emote better. But, as folks start to get angrier, will they get angry at her? Hard to say.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people have been in the cold and dark for a week, now. There’s going to be Hell to pay, by the time this thing is done.
What’s your take?