Move over the Onion

Apparently the Star is trying to take the Onion's place as the world's source of hilarious headlines:

On the subject of Rob Ford's dismissal of democracy as "irrelevant"

Here's the press conference. Skip to 2:05.

Pathetic Fallacy

After last week's core service "review" pandemonium, the city continues to come apart at the seams as buildings and raised highways fall apart in sympathy with the administrative dismantling of our once great (or at least Good) city.

Admittedly, ours is not the only city which threatens to crush its citizens, but then again, who *wouldn't* want to crush Montreal drivers.

Wrong question

There are a lot of headlines in the news right now asking why His Corpulence will not be attending the Gay Pride Parade. But I think this question misses the point entirely. The real question is: how could the people of the largest city in a country built on acceptance and tolerance, with an enormous and thriving gay community have elected a mayor who would shun the biggest gay event of the year in his first year in office? The parade is obviously a very big deal to a lot of the citizens of this city. If it is this important that the mayor attend, maybe this needs to be made a campaign issue. I think, at the very least, it would make a good indicator as to whether we're electing a tolerant mayor who wants to help all the people of the city, or an angry fat innumerate moron who is ideologically hellbent for (next) election on tearing everything great about this city to the ground.

If you're one of those people who is asking the question, "why would the mayor go to the Pride Parade? Ick," I highly recommend you go yourself. You really have to experience it firsthand. Even if the party isn't your style, it's hard to argue against something that brings so many people so much joy. And hey, who knows, maybe you'll surprise yourself and have a good time anyway.

Ultimately, it is the mayor's personal decision as to whether he attends the Pride Parade and maybe cajoling him in the headlines will change his mind. But I think the headline space is more appropriately used for real political matters. I can't call my councilor and ask him to make Rob Ford attend the Parade, but I can certainly call and write and ask him to push very hard against the mayor's handpicked whipped councilors on the Public Works Committee's recent decision to spend 10s-to-100s of thousands of dollars on removing bike lanes which are, by all accounts, not in anyone's way.

Easy Does It

It would appear that some of my previous posts have raised the hackles of some Lt. Colonel in the Ford Nation armed forces. Well, tough. I think the second you run for public office, you open yourself to all manner of criticism, lampooning, etc. So I don't ever feel bad for criticising a politician.

You might say his weight has nothing to do with his official position and is therefore not fair game. Au contraire, I retort. I think Ford's weight problem has everything to do with the political woes of this city. Because first of all, he is not simply a bit chubby. We're not talking about someone who could stand to get a bit more exercise but is otherwise healthy. We're talking about someone who is probably morbidly obese or super obese* (worst. superpower. ever.). The health problems that come with that are a serious concern in a civic leader. For example, what if he dies in office? That would be chaos for the city.

But that is really just the obvious problem. The bigger problem is what his weight problem represents -- that is, his lack of self control. While it's possible that there are some genetic factors here, his machiavellian brother has half the same genes and isn't morbidly obese. What is more likely is that diet and exercise are the culprits here. But controlling his diet and exercise is not really his style. And that kind of behaviour spills over into council, for example, when a vote doesn't go his way. And of course this lack of maturity is why so many people love him so much.

Self control is hard, but the new mayor peddles easy answers, such as "Toronto has a spending problem, not a revenue problem." This sounds really good because the problem is easy to fix and falls on someone else – someone else is wasting my money. And then, lo and behold, when it turns out Toronto does have a revenue problem, it's someone else's problem again. And when that someone gives him the same hard line he's been running all around the city, he throws a temper tantrum and threatens to begin a war by inventing a sovereign nation.

Because that's the easy answer. But it's an easy answer that is unlikely to accomplish anything but short-term self satisfaction. This city needs a leader who is interested in more than instant gratification. Great things require hard work.

The mayor's weight problem is just symptom of the mayor's lack of self control. And the mayor is a symptom of voters'.

* According to this extremely unscientific source, Don Cherry is 5'11" tall and Rob Ford is a bit taller than Don Cherry in the photos from the infamous inauguration, so if we give him 6'1" and take a wild guess at his weight being 300lbs, we get a body mass index of 39.6.

Fast Ford Nation

Inspired by top user comment on this Toronto Star article. Thanks to everyone in the lab who helped, especially Andrew.

Ford Nation Passport Cover by CJ Lee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Worship This

According to Wikipedia, most municipal leaders in Canada are called "mayor". Some small areas villages and rural areas still use the term "reeve". There is one exception to this. Niagara-on-the-Lake gets a "lord mayor" instead or a mayor or reeve. This is apparently in recognition of the fact that Niagara-on-the-Lake was once the capital of Upper Canada.

Mayors in Canada are styled "Worship", as in when talking directly to a mayor you say "Your Worship" and when talking about a mayor you say "Her Worship" or "His Worship". What I would like is for Toronto to get an exception to this rule, the way Niagara-on-the-Lake gets an exception to the "mayor" thing. I think that present and future mayors of Toronto should be henceforth styled "Corpulence". As in "Your Corpulence, Mayor of Toronto, I am writing you to ask that you use the considerable weight of your office..." and so on.

I can't find out where these stylings come from, so if you have any information about that, please leave it in the comments. I asked a librarian friend and she didn't know either but she said she suspected that it's a matter of tradition and that the way to "officially" change it would be to simply get people using the term. So, I beseech you to use the considerable weight of your conversation to make my (admittedly petty) dream come true.