Ford vote wrong from the start
Crack was the least of Rob Ford’s sins.
Drug addiction — and I’m not convinced Ford was a drug addict rather than a dabbler — isn’t a moral failing.
If the sum of our late mayor’s wrongdoing was that he sucked on a crack pipe now and then, that should not be cause to endlessly vilify him although reason enough to remove virtually every trapping of power to govern. This law-and-order pol consorted with criminals and became himself a target of police surveillance.
History is replete with individuals who had drug vices at some point in their lives and they have been venerated — from Sigmund Freud to Steve Jobs to Billie Holiday to Arthur Conan Doyle to William Burroughs to Prince.
It was as a politician that Ford failed, despite capturing the mayoralty — through a dozen years as an insignificant, obstreperous backbench councillor and three years at the municipality helm, during which he floundered at just about every bumper-sticker promise made whilst campaigning.
It was as a decent human being that Ford failed too because he was manifestly not the jolly and benign socially awkward galumph as portrayed by his apologists. He was, rather, the foul-mouthed and bullying miscreant who infamously unleashed obscenities at complaining fans sitting around him at a Maple Leafs game and berated city hall security guards in one of his late-night drunken escapades.
He was a racist and a sexist and a homophobe and a spectacular prevaricator.
A word cloud of his known utterances — captured on video or confirmed by those who suffered in his presence — includes: “dumb f---ing wop,” “f---ing dago,” “c---------,” “(Pride) f---ing flag.”
He wrote a character letter for a friend convicted of threatening to kill his girlfriend.
There is no point in further tripping down memory lane, not in a city where Ford’s offences and infractions are so well remembered.
So he answered his own phone and directly came to the assistance of constituents with problems — an inefficient use of his time and resources. So he volunteered as a football coach. Big f---ing deal.
Thousands do volunteer work in their community and we don’t give them marquee homage.
Late Wednesday evening, wiser heads on Toronto council prevailed, voting 24-11 against renaming Centennial Park Stadium in his Etobicoke stomping grounds the “Rob Ford Memorial Stadium.”
This berserk proposal had been put forward by Mayor John Tory in so colossal an affront of misjudgment and imprudence that his instincts compass must have been spinning off magnetic due moral north. If it pleases the remnants of Ford Nation next time they go to the polls, Tory is unlikely to enjoy any bump in support that would presumably cleave to Doug Ford anyway.
And the anti-Ford constituency may not forgive him for so calculated a piece of politicking — precisely the same kind of miscalculation that Tory plucked out of thin air in 2007 when, as opposition leader at Queen’s Park, he promised to provide government funding for all of the province’s private Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Islamic schools, a clanger that arguably cost the Conservatives that election.
Too often during his term, when matters of resounding civic importance are on the table — police carding, for instance — Tory has proved himself disappointingly weak and malleable.
But this Ford Stadium thing should have been a no-no no-brainer, even if framed as a gerrymandered act of political self-preservation and pre-emption, dressed up as magnanimity, at the request of the Ford family.
“In all of my actions as mayor, and I think people would find it difficult to cite examples otherwise, I try to be generous, to put politics to the side and to do what seems right, (which) I think most of us do most of the time. It’s often been a challenging course in a big city, which by definition contains many groups of people who have different opinions about what the right thing to do would be.’’
Thus he assured the Ford family, particularly matriarch Diane Ford, that he would “honour” their request to table the motion, thereby “erring on the side of generosity.”
Ford invested himself with virtue for a most unvirtuous recommendation — a slap in the face to every segment of our citizenry that Rob Ford slandered.
Tory must not have read the city of Toronto’s honourific and street-naming policies, amended just two years ago, which explicitly prohibits any undertaking which is “or be perceived to be discriminatory or derogatory of race, colour, ethnic origin, gender identity or expression, sex, sexual orientation, creed, political affinity, disability or other social factors.”
Rob Ford hits the mark on a bunch of those, via his own behaviour and comments.
I am weary of politicians commemorating themselves and their colleagues around this city, on street names, parks, child-care centres, public squares, schools and recreational facilities. Bad enough that, if you’re rich enough or influential enough, you can convince hospitals to rebrand themselves after a departed loved one. Bad enough that corporations with deep pockets can buy naming rights to sports arenas.
Enough of gilding the puffed-up dead, especially flavour-of-themoment politicians, on public property. Which is why Toronto council was wrong-headed in splitting up Tory’s original motion, voting separately on somehow honouring two other councillors — the late Pam McConnell and Ron Moeser — who died this term.
We are already far too populated by the commemoratively undead.
Further, as per the aforementioned city policy, naming of recent events or recently deceased individuals may only be considered “after two years.”
Rob Ford died less than 17 months ago.
This debate, and this vote, should never have been held. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.