Former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau once said, famously, that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. But thanks to Mayor Train Wreck, we now understand that the people definitely don’t want to be told about what apparently goes on in the bedrooms of the state, or at least its most visibly demented representative.
After years of post-amalgamation division, in fact, it seems that Rob Ford has managed to identify a locus of consensus in the city’s public life. It doesn’t matter where you live, or what you do for a living. Public disgust over his lewd remarks about a former staffer and then his wife (followed up by his decision to showcase Renata’s shame — and his spectacular lack thereof — before the entire world), appears to traverse every social, political and cultural boundary this city contains.
Over the weekend, in fact, I asked many people and councillors — on Twitter, Facebook, and in person — what shocked them the most after last week: the pussy line, or the very specific revelations, contained in the court documents released last Wednesday, about his utterly cavalier drinking and driving.
By a margin of at least four to one, my respondents chose the vulgarities. Several said they felt they already knew about the DWI and the drug use. That one-liner, by contrast, almost certainly marked a tipping point – that last drop which, when added to an almost super-saturated solution, causes a chemical reaction.
One person I spoke with also offered up this perceptive observation: it’s as if, in these last several hallucinatory weeks, we’ve all become addicted to our Ford news feed (drip?). With each revelation, we discover that we need – or perversely crave – ever purer hits to break through our de-sensitization. The presser was mind-blowing — a new drug, producing sensations we’ve never before experienced.
In that rare moment of genuine candor, Ford had invited us to peer inside his formidably guarded psyche. And almost everyone recoiled at what they saw.
At the risk of parsing all this too finely, however, I nonetheless find the public response vaguely surprising. From the court documents and then under questioning at council, two details became very clear:
One, that Ford has been recklessly endangering the lives of thousands of Torontonians who happened to be driving near his smoke-windowed tank on city streets. So many near-death experiences, so many moments when the spectre of tragedy hovered low and menacingly over people simply going about their day.
Two, that Ford consciously chose to not disclose acts of criminality to the police, as is his duty as an elected public official. What’s more, he refused to talk to investigators. Yes, he has a legal right not to self-incriminate. But that decision was also strongly indicative of a guilty conscience. Why else would he refuse?
In both cases, his actions represent an abdication of his sworn responsibility to uphold public safety. To me, they mark the most unforgiveable transgressions.
Yet perhaps the reason the scrum and the subsequent presser with Renata resonated so powerfully is that these bookended events frame a man coming unhinged before our eyes, in real time, with the world watching rapt. Wandering in the storm on the heath, enraged, lost, blind. But definitely not alone.
We don’t see public figures cracking up very often. Political scandals tend to involve extra-marital sex or corruption. Some leaders with alcohol problems – Ralph Klein, Boris Yeltsin – behave badly in public but don’t come precipitously unglued. Others are caught in the act (B.C.’s Gordon Campbell), and a few inflict harm (Rene Levesque, who hit and killed a homeless man after an alleged evening of drinking).
Italy’s renegade and oft-indicted former president Silvio Berlusconi may be the contemporary public figure whose epic narcissism – the politician’s disease — most strongly hints at untreated mental illness.
Still, Ford now seems to be in a class of his own, and his downward spiral in recent days reminds me of Peter Finch’s stunning performance as Howard Beale in “Network.” As was the case with Beale’s on-air rants, we cannot look away, as The Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente wrote last week. Why? Because the lurid drama of Ford’s demise is at once frightening and voyeuristically captivating – like the crazy character on the subway who paces around, looking to sit down next to some poor schmuck. You watch intently, but you desperately want to avoid eye contact.
At the level of practical politics, however, the insanity underwriting Ford’s steadfast refusal to withdraw means that council’s moves to strip him of his formal authority – the third installment, slashing his office budget, is up for debate today — will have little tangible effect. He will go on talking and we will go on listening.
Indeed, I’d argue that even if all three provincial leaders somehow agreed and allowed premier Kathleen Wynne to stage a political intervention, Ford will continue to careen along at high speed, utterly out of control, with the city’s and the world’s media recording every mind-altering detail.
This made-in-Toronto reality show can only end one way, and that’s badly.
3 comments
This will “end badly” is frequently bandied about, without defining the endpoint.
The endpoint, could be re-election with 27% of the vote, and 5 others spliting the balance. That is the worst ending of all…
I think the reason the vulgar comment resonated so much is that it destroyed the last of the Mayor’s credibility. There are many instances where we know or at least overwhelmingly suspect that the Mayor lied. His approach is deny, deny, deny and then admit what gets proved. (He also thinks an apology can make it all go away, whatever the harm.) However, with so many denials still “out there” many were willing to give the Mayor the benefit of the doubt. His staff reported his harassing misogynistic behaviour to the police and the Mayor said it was all untrue and that he would sue. When the Mayor – sober and speaking in public – displayed exactly the same kind of behaviour the doubt vanished. We don’t know what the Mayor said or did on St. Patrick’s Day 2012, but his vulgar behaviour added enormous credibility to the staff testimony and badly undermines his denials.
I found those comments that Thursday the worst not because he said pussy (and the eating thereof) but because of how he invoked his wife and then paraded her out front as he made his “apology.” The disrespect with which he treated her seemed to me to confirm the probability that what goes on at home is even worse. (Not to mention the numerous 911s) there are innocent children at risk.