[URBAN NOTE] "Don’t feel sorry for Rob Ford"

[rfmcdonald]

The very strongly anti-Ford weekly NOW Toronto has a column up, by Enzo Di Matteo, that is not at all sympathetic to Rob Ford.

Justice Hackland has done Toronto, turned laughingstock by a buffoon, a big favour.

Of course, in Ford’s mind it was everybody else’s fault when the news broke and he found himself unceremoniously dumped.

After the verdict, the mayor showed up at a meeting of his closest advisers in his muddy sweats (he’d been putting his football team through practice in preparation for the next day’s Metro Bowl at the Rogers Centre) – and in deep denial.

When he met the crush of reporters waiting outside his City Hall office, he blamed “left-wing politics” for his defeat and promised to fight the decision “tooth and nail.”

It seems the vast left-wing conspiracy against the mayor includes Justice Hackland, who was appointed by Ford’s fishing buddy in Ottawa, Stephen Harper. One Sun TV commentator said “homosexual extremists” were responsible for the judge’s decision. Yup. Those fucking downtown elites were picking on their boy again.

Ford’s was a pathetic performance. By the time his brother Doug took to the airwaves late Monday afternoon to do damage control on AM 640, Newstalk 1010 and the Stephen LeDrew show, the talking points had changed to how Ford’s football foundation was helping kids in priority neighbourhoods.

Doug Ford also pointed the inevitable finger at other politicians who’ve burned money on assorted wasteful projects. Ford friendlies in the media quickly seized on the Liberals’ gas plant fiasco as a subject of comparison. I hear a march on the office of Clayton Ruby, the lawyer who made the winning case against Ford, may be in the works. And so went the chest-beating by the Ford camp.