{"id":46568,"date":"2013-11-18T08:30:32","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T13:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=46568"},"modified":"2013-11-17T21:12:09","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T02:12:09","slug":"lorinc-rob-ford-outshame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/11\/18\/lorinc-rob-ford-outshame\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Only Rob Ford could outshame himself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/06\/27\/lorinc-how-to-keep-metrolinx-honest\/feature-lorinc-3\/#main\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-44316\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-44316\" alt=\"feature-lorinc\" src=\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2013\/06\/feature-lorinc.gif\" width=\"600\" height=\"85\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t want to be told about what apparently goes on in the bedrooms of the state, or at least its most visibly demented representative.<\/p>\n<p>After years of post-amalgamation division, in fact, it seems that Rob Ford has managed to identify a locus of consensus in the city\u2019s public life. It doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s shame \u2014 and his spectacular lack thereof \u2014 before the entire world), appears to traverse every social, political and cultural boundary this city contains.<\/p>\n<p>Over the weekend, in fact, I asked many people and councillors &#8212; on Twitter, Facebook, and in person &#8212; 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u2013 that last drop which, when added to an almost super-saturated solution, causes a chemical reaction.<\/p>\n<p>One person I spoke with also offered up this perceptive observation: it\u2019s as if, in these last several hallucinatory weeks, we\u2019ve all become addicted to our Ford news feed (drip?). With each revelation, we discover that we need \u2013 or perversely crave \u2013 ever purer hits to break through our de-sensitization. The presser was mind-blowing &#8212; a new drug, producing sensations we\u2019ve never before experienced.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Two, that Ford consciously chose to not disclose acts of criminality to the police, as is his duty as an elected public official. What\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n<p>In both cases, his actions represent an abdication of his sworn responsibility to uphold public safety. To me, they mark the most unforgiveable transgressions.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>We don\u2019t see public figures cracking up very often. Political scandals tend to involve extra-marital sex or corruption. Some leaders with alcohol problems \u2013 Ralph Klein, Boris Yeltsin \u2013 behave badly in public but don\u2019t come precipitously unglued. Others are caught in the act (B.C.\u2019s Gordon Campbell), and a few inflict harm (Rene Levesque, who hit and killed a homeless man after an alleged evening of drinking).<\/p>\n<p>Italy\u2019s renegade and oft-indicted former president Silvio Berlusconi may be the contemporary public figure whose epic narcissism \u2013 the politician\u2019s disease &#8212; most strongly hints at untreated mental illness.<\/p>\n<p>Still, Ford now seems to be in a class of his own, and his downward spiral in recent days reminds me of Peter Finch\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AS4aiA17YsM\">stunning performance as Howard Beale in \u201cNetwork.\u201d<\/a> As was the case with Beale\u2019s on-air rants, we cannot look away, as The Globe and Mail\u2019s Margaret Wente wrote last week. Why? Because the lurid drama of Ford\u2019s demise is at once frightening and voyeuristically captivating \u2013 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.<\/p>\n<p>At the level of practical politics, however, the insanity underwriting Ford\u2019s steadfast refusal to withdraw means that council\u2019s moves to strip him of his formal authority \u2013 the third installment, slashing his office budget, is up for debate today \u2014 will have little tangible effect. He will go on talking and we will go on listening.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, I\u2019d 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\u2019s and the world\u2019s media recording every mind-altering detail.<\/p>\n<p>This made-in-Toronto reality show can only end one way, and that\u2019s badly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019t want to be told about what apparently goes on in the bedrooms of the state, or at least its most<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/11\/18\/lorinc-rob-ford-outshame\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;LORINC: Only Rob Ford could outshame himself&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":46573,"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-46568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>LORINC: Only Rob Ford could outshame himself - 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\/18\/lorinc-rob-ford-outshame\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Only Rob Ford could outshame himself - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau once said, famously, that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. 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