Rob Ford is a walking headline. Whatever he does, wherever he goes he gets Hollywood treatment from the “paparazzi”. The jellowy mayor of Toronto is under constant supervision from the newspaper looking for every little detail to implicate him or add to his reputation as a drunken, drug-addled bully.
So when he showed up at the Taste of the Danforth by himself, just enjoying the night and the crowd, the media had a feeding frenzy. The Toronto Star, who is more like a jilted lover stalker than a news media when it comes to Rob Ford has been having a field day with this one. Calling him the wasted fool and saying it’s inappropriate for a mayor of such a fine city to be walking around drunk.
Reading the article by Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno, you could tell that she tried every which way to come up with smart little quips and insults to twist the incident into a full-blown scandal. Reading some of the comments, you can clearly see that there are two main camps. The ones who support Ford, and the ones who absolutely despise him. I tried to get an idea of how many readers had a problem with our mayor getting his drink on, but the comments quickly digressed into insults and racist remarks until you had the PC, Liberals, NDP, the terrorists, Justin Bieber and the Muslims all covered under one article.
You can watch the video below and ask yourself if he was acting inappropriately, but I think you might find it is a waste of your time. You would probably be more entertained watching cute animal bloopers. I watched the video and the only thing I saw was Rob Ford having a good night out on the town and interacting with the attendees of the festival. Unfortunately, Rob never took his pants or shirt off and go running wild into the night. He didn’t even grope any of the countless fine ladies present.
In fact, I was hoping maybe he would do some beer bongs and chug the night away while wolfing down pork chops and lamb kebobs. Nope, nothing here. Move along please. The fact that Rob Ford is being criticized for wanting to go out and have a good time is quite disturbing really. The smartphone age is putting eyes everywhere and at the same time, it gives everyone a chance to express their opinions, whether it’s wanted or not.
Some might say Rob Ford is the mayor of a big city and as such he should act more appropriately. He should be respected and not walk around like a blubbering fool. But then again, you look at other news stories and you have mayors everywhere in the world acting like general fools or deviants, yet somehow they still manage to keep their jobs. So what standard are we going by here? How about Montreal? Another big Canadian city that is dealing with their own turmoil with their corrupt mayor(s). Or New York where mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner keeps taking pictures of his junk. Bill Clinton is a poster child of office naughtiness.
The one standard we should really look at is whether mayor Ford is keeping the city running properly and that our budget doesn’t spiral out of control. One look at Detroit tells you all you need to know. The majority of Detroit’s budget goes towards it’s retired pensioner funds and the rest that is left is not enough to keep the city afloat. So far, Toronto seems to be in good order and the mayhem and destruction predicted by letting Ford run the show back in October 2010 have not happened yet.
The citizens of Toronto are not so gullible that the news media can keep fooling them into ousting Rob Ford from office. They know that Toronto is being handled smoothly and that services are running properly. This is all they care about. They don’t care that Rob Ford gets drunk every now and then. If anything it makes Rob more real as a human than a mouthpiece of bureaucratic policy. Certainly, Rob Ford is no saint with the crack video scandals and his penchant for being a buffoon. The one thing that hasn’t changed though is that he is getting the job done.
