St. Rob Ford The Baptist

by Kathy Shaidle
Taki's Magazine
Mar. 31, 2016

They won't have Rob Ford to stub their toes on anymore.

Last week, the ex--Toronto mayor, struck by a rare form of cancer, was checked into palliative care, the "couples counseling" of medical science.

Being the only conservative they know, a friend was tapped to write Ford's obit for a liberal local (but I repeat myself) website. Sympathetic yet frank, it's a finely tuned portrait of the crack-smoking populist dynamo who divided the city and briefly became its unsanctioned international mascot--a sort of "World's Largest Ball of String" but fashioned from arterial plaque, polyester, and sweat.

I'm confident that many Torontonians who cringed whenever their out-of-town friends asked about "that Rob Ford guy" would (secretly) agree that

the "Crazy Town" era of Toronto politics was a necessary and even secretly thrilling antidote to the city's reputation as a place of merely competent governance and historically certified dullness.

After Ford's death, other media outlets who'd been rabidly hostile to the mayor also managed to cough up (mostly) snark-free eulogies.

So they can be calm and thoughtful after all. Where was this tone when the guy was alive? Ah, but now that Rob Ford is safely dead, these journalists figure the "danger" has passed. They did their duty and can--nay, should--be magnanimous in victory, no?

"So the media can be calm and thoughtful after all. Where was this tone when the guy was alive?"

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