{"id":46487,"date":"2013-11-13T08:30:52","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T13:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=46487"},"modified":"2013-11-12T22:31:47","modified_gmt":"2013-11-13T03:31:47","slug":"lorinc-ford-plays-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/11\/13\/lorinc-ford-plays-media\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Ford bobbles the media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feature-lorinc\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mayor Rob Ford is a politician who deals in pure, uncut intuition.<\/p>\n

After that entertaining little sideshow yesterday about his branded swag, what could be clearer?<\/p>\n

For much of Tuesday\u2019s news cycle, the press corps obediently provided our crack-smoking, dissembling chief magistrate with the kind of publicity you just can\u2019t buy. For months, the narrative arc of the Ford story was dominated by scenes of flight and pursuit \u2014 the mayor as literal and figurative fugitive, fleeing the police and the press or some combination thereof.<\/p>\n

But in the aftermath of an almost unimaginably humiliating week, he pulls off what could only be described as a public relations coup by hiding in plain view.<\/p>\n

The post-crack-confession narrative is all about (engineered) transparency, self-deprecating humour, and cheerful partisanship, topped up with a gram or two of selfless civic concern (the little coda about relief efforts for Philippines just before the evening newscasts) to, well, help us all forget and forgive. The fugitive is not only accessible to the grinning vultures in the media; he\u2019ll autograph the souvenirs they like to keep on their desks. It takes a big man, and all that.<\/p>\n

And we all fell for it.<\/p>\n

Consequently, Ford enters council today on the offensive. Yes, he\u2019s going to be the subject of Denzil Minnan-Wong\u2019s toothless censure motion. But for voters who tuned in to the easy-breezy bobble head storyline (they\u2019re selling for hundreds on eBay, don\u2019t you know!), Ford will emerge, once again, as a kind of bearlike bullying victim \u2014 conspicuously contrite, out there, and now facing the politically-motivated prigs on council who only want to get in their kicks for the cable access viewers at home and potential donors.<\/p>\n

My prediction: He\u2019ll use his mayoral prerogative to position himself in front of the motion early on \u2014 rising to speak, hanging his head, repeating last week\u2019s apology, talking about going to the gym, and then getting back on the message track.<\/p>\n

Et voila<\/em>, problem solved. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if it was all over by noon.<\/p>\n

Here, I think, is what Ford intuits about how this scandal is playing out: The editorial writers can\u2019t continue to pen vein-popping screeds indefinitely. The crack video may air, but he\u2019s admitted everything so there\u2019s no more shock value there. Jon Stewart will move on to other material, and the international TV crews will go off in search of other salacious stories with global import. The storm will pass. The governance crisis, however, will remain, even if the circus has left town. Maybe, as Gord Perks has argued on Twitter and in the Huffington Post, politicians shouldn\u2019t be in the business of passing judgment on their peers. That\u2019s the responsibility our society has assigned to the voting public.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not convinced. True, pushing the provincial government to pass recall legislation is not the best way to go; such laws merely stoke the moneyed populism that has created gridlock and perma-campaigns in many U.S. jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

What about the existing legal framework? The City of Toronto Act has provisions that require politicians to leave office if they have a criminal conviction or fail to show up for council for a sufficient period of time. Are those sanctions sufficient? Ford hasn\u2019t been convicted of anything. But if the truancy provision is a kind of litmus test for a municipal politician\u2019s attitude towards the office, Ford\u2019s admitted transgressions are inarguably more serious than truancy.<\/p>\n

So anticipating the anti-climax that will be today\u2019s vote, our attention must turn in the direction of John Filion\u2019s notice of motion<\/a>, which goes somewhat further in stripping the mayor of his powers to set council\u2019s agenda and determine its political make-up. In my view, the motion should go further, and severely curb the mayor\u2019s office budget so he can\u2019t use the city\u2019s resources to campaign for re-election.<\/p>\n

But to take these steps, the councillors need to have the courage of their convictions. They all signed on to the code of conduct. They\u2019ve all told him to step away. They\u2019ve all decried the dishonour that he\u2019s brought to the Office of the Mayor.<\/p>\n

If or when this \u201cspectacle,\u201d<\/a> to quote journalist Stephen Marche\u2019s spot-on description of last week\u2019s events, dissipates, our local representatives must choose to act, not to enable. Punting this one to the voters is just passing the bobblehead.<\/p>\n

photo courtesy Winnipeg Free Press<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mayor Rob Ford is a politician who deals in pure, uncut intuition. After that entertaining little sideshow yesterday about his branded swag, what could be clearer? For much of Tuesday\u2019s news cycle, the press corps obediently provided our crack-smoking, dissembling chief magistrate with the kind of publicity you just can\u2019t buy. For months, the narrativeContinue reading “LORINC: Ford bobbles the media”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":46491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Ford bobbles the media - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/11\/13\/lorinc-ford-plays-media\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Ford bobbles the media - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mayor Rob Ford is a politician who deals in pure, uncut intuition. 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