Cynics Unlimited

Toronto’s favourite grandstanding politician has done it again. Not content embarrassing himself in a drunken furor at a Leafs game or offending the Asian community with railway-era stereotyping, Councilor Rob Ford has allegedly spread his venom a little closer to home:

Toronto city councillor Rob Ford, a maverick best known for his campaigns against spending at City Hall, has been charged with assaulting and uttering death threats against his wife after police were called to his Etobicoke home yesterday morning.

Mr. Ford was arrested and taken to 22 Division headquarters in Etobicoke and released without bail after promising to appear in court on April 28.

Mr. Ford’s lawyer, Dennis Morris, confirmed the alleged victim is Renata Ford, Mr. Ford’s wife and mother of the couple’s three-year-old daughter and baby son.

Discretion is simply not in this man’s arsenal. Since criminal proceedings are all but guaranteed, Mr. Ford’s political fortune may finally have run out. The press will have a field day dissecting every public aggression and analyze every sneer / hiccup / utterance for meaning. Perhaps we’ll be treated to a panel of experts who will –in hindsight- proclaim that the signs were all there and that the bombastic Ford was a ticking time bomb.

Is Rob Ford a drunk, a wife-beater or a bigot? Possibly (note to lawyers: “possibly” does NOT equal “yes”), but the term boorish seems more appropriate. Rob Ford is a 1950’s man – a pre political-correctness alpha-male for whom getting the job done entails precisely what is written on paper (at which he excels), with the rest of his conduct being precisely none of your business. Unfortunately, this old school brand of politician is easy prey in an internet-driven world where even a slight slip of the tongue can be posted on YouTube, dissected by the mainstream media and blogged by thousands of publicity-hungry pundits before end of day. The proliferation and endless analysis of damning evidence against public figures that will be forever stored in modern data links renders slim any chance of the whitewashing that yesterday’s politicians enjoyed. Many of our favourite historic figures carried scandal and contradiction that would not be so quickly forgiven today:

• Christopher Columbus, crowned discoverer of much of the Americas, was far from the first to reach western shores. Of course the natives had migrated tens of thousands of years earlier, but confirmed voyages by the Vikings and rumoured voyages by the Irish/English cast doubt on his title as first European. Crediting Columbus for first conceiving a round earth is also incorrect – Greek records show Plato (427 BCE - 347 BCE) teaching his students the idea of a spherical earth. Indian astronomer Aryabhata and Armenian philosopher Anania Shirakatsi also promoted a round earth model long before Columbus was born. Conversely, Al Gore allegedly tried to take credit for inventing the internet and is pilloried for it to this day – on his own supposed invention, no less.
• Mohandas (”Mahatma”) Gandhi –revered champion of Indian equality and pacifist inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr- became conveniently colonial in his attitude towards native Africans during his time in South Africa. Contrasting his struggle with that of black South Africans, he stated “Ours is one continued struggle sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”. At another point he stated in The Indian Opinion “We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they (the Whites) do…by advocating the purity of all races”. Such demagoguery is far more contradictory than post-racial Democrat Barack Obama consorting with a racially-charged preacher.
• As late as the 1960’s President John F Kennedy’s powerful oratory skills and general charm were sufficient to keep his image generally unsullied by mounting stories of serial infidelity. Though the FBI possessed reports of immoral sexual behaviour going back to World War II, the media (which at the time really was a small fraternity) upheld JFK and Jackie’s marriage as loving and flawless. If only Bill Clinton commanded such loyalty from the press…

None of these posthumously anointed heroes would have survived present-day media scrutiny and at best would have been labeled flawed benefactors. Rob Ford –having not spread western influence, uplifted a people or stared down a communist menace- will in memoriam be a CityNews punch line. His biggest mistake was being born too late. We should keep this in mind before sending him to the gallows.