Despite his vast wealth – assured by his family's gigantic label-making company, Deco Labels and Tags – he's successfully portrayed himself as John Everyman. He speaks plainly, decries waste in the public sector and previously balanced his mayoral duties with high school football coaching. You know, just a regular Joe who works hard, loves sports and likes a burger. Or eight.
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| Sixty Scotch eggs... Seventy pies... HIKE! |
But Rob is also hilarious; a riot; a gag reel stuck on repeat. His rap sheet is extraordinary and he's always finding new and innovative ways to plunge his caricature-like public image to fresh and unexpected depths. Bring to mind an appropriate soundtrack – something blue collar and heterosexual, like Young Guns by Wham! – and turn his list of misdemeanours into a make-believe montage:
- Caught reading at the wheel while driving down the highway. His response: "I'm a busy guy." Resists suggestions that he needs a driver and fails to acknowledge the perils of distracted driving. Later careers between a stopped streetcar and the pavement, which is illegal. Apparently.
- Following a barnstorming brawl at his high school football team's game, Ford places a personal call to TTC CEO Andy Byford to have two city buses pulled off their routes and redirected to collect his players. Implication for passengers left stranded at bus stops: tough tits!
- Ford habitually refuses to attend Toronto's Gay Pride parade. His reason? He's at the family cottage being a real family man, doing real manly things. Just so happens that it clashes with the parade each and every year.
- Toronto's integrity commissioner rules that Ford abused his position by using the city letterhead to raise funds for his football foundation. Rob shows up at a later hearing and votes against a motion to hand donations back. How can he be expected to know what a conflict of interest is if he never read the handbook in the first place? Game, set and match to Ford.
- March 2008: "Those Oriental people work like dogs. They work their hearts out. They are workers non-stop. They sleep beside their machines. That's why they're successful in life. I went to Seoul, South Korea, I went to Taipei, Taiwan. I went to Tokyo, Japan. That's why these people are so hard workers (sic). I'm telling you, the Oriental people, they're slowly taking over."
- A weekly, two-hour radio show The City with Mayor Rob Ford and Councillor Doug Ford begins in February 2012. Dave Price, Ford's director of operations and logistics, is later revealed to have repeatedly called the show without revealing his connection to the mayor. Price's comments: Ford is a great mentor for young people, former Toronto mayor Miller was basically a communist and a 5-cent plastic bag charge – which Ford vehemently opposed – constituted "fascism".
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| Media relations, Ford-style |
But what really puts good old Rob in the world's spotlight is his alleged substance abuse. No, not his 1999 conviction for DUI and marijuana possession; nor his 2006 ejection from a Maple Leafs hockey game for drunkenly berating a couple sat nearby; nor the repeated police visits to his home for reports of domestic "unrest". Rather, Mayor Ford took it to a new level in 2013 when a video surfaced allegedly showing him smoking crack (smoking... crack) with three unidentified ne'er-do-wells.
Rob deadpanned his way through the crisis, and by the time a fund had been raised to buy the tape in question, the seller "could not be reached". Another in the video turned his toes up in mysterious circumstances, but Rob eventually emerged with a comprehensive denial: "I do not use crack," he said, his obvious innocence circumventing the need for the word "never". "As for a video… I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist."
Did the Ford family make full use of their incredible wealth to purchase the incriminating evidence and bury it? I would never, ever suggest such a thing. Besides, Rob has it in his mind to give permanent residents – not just Canadian citizens – the municipal vote in Toronto. That makes him one of the good guys – and me the newest member of Ford Nation, North America's most loltacular political entity since The Tea Party.
