@AntoniaZ, @SusannaKelley, @marcusbgee, and the Rob Ford ascendancy | #TOpoli

Wonderful thing, the Tweeter. Keeps things lively, and keeps you on your toes.

So apparently there's some question over what I wrote about the Globe's ideologically reliable urban affairs curmudgeon and his role in helping propel Mayor Stupid into the Chief Magistrate's office. Over at ontarionewswatch.com, Editor-in-Chief and Ontario Bureau Chief @SusannaKelley apparently takes issue with a tweet from @AntoniaZ regarding a post from me yesterday morning.

Let's hear from another Sun reader ...

People like this are allowed to walk the streets unsupervised.

They're allowed out after dark.

They're allowed to vote.

Comforting, isn't it.

Really, George? That's the best you can do?

Terrific post from Cityslikr over at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke, defiantly taking George Smitherman to task for his arrogant and cynical strategy of wooing progressive voters by arguing that a vote for Joe Pantalone will put Rob Ford in the mayor's chair. I was disgusted enough by the sleazy sense of entitlement he was displaying on Metro Morning today, but this is, as they say, the cherry on the sundae.

When clichés replace actual thought

Really, Sarah.

The "come on, boys, behave" act is getting tired. And "mad as hell and not going to take it any more" doesn't qualify as thoughtful engagement.

The sad part is that you can do better.  But then, so can we.

Update: And so we have.  Take the hint, Rocco.

Smitherman's toast

Really, when was the last time anyone blew a lead like this (other than Paul Maurice's Leafs, of course?)  I think this sums up George's campaign about as well as anything:

There's a line between between chutzpah and arrogance, and with the suggestion that the anti-Ford vote should coalesce around him, I'd say George has just crossed it.

He started out as the front-runner, without much vision but with plenty of establishment backing and a big-time attitude of entitlement. Then when Rob Ford's message (stupid and simplistic though it is) started becoming the defining storyline of the campaign, he joined Rossi and Thomson trying to out-Ford Rob Ford. Andrea Addario sums it up beautifully:

The credible alternative to Rob Ford is not a candidate that panders to the same parts of the city’s lizard brain. Any campaign that successfully counters Ford’s rage, in both its incoherent and specific forms, needs to reach the progressive, compassionate heart of Toronto – the Toronto that rejected Mike Harris and still rejects Stephen Harper.

Is that George Smitherman? Not looking likely. In his craven bid to appeal to the same destructive anger as Ford, he threw away the opportunity to be that alternative. Smitherman has embraced spending freezes, privatization, and tax cutting. What’s the message here? Look at me! I’m just like Rob Ford! But I live downtown, so I’m somehow less scary? It hasn’t worked.

Time to face it, George: you're toast. You've gone in only one direction since the campaign kicked off, and you've had plenty of time to turn it around, so there's really no reason to think you've got any growth potential. Time to call it a day.

Update: The lady's got the right idea, although if this is true, she's leaning toward the wrong Italian. Take the hint.

Update 2: The lady's not for turning. Even if the car's heading for the cliff ...

Update 3: Globe curmudgeon Marcus Gee is writing as if it's a two-man race now. And George isn't one of them.

Another Sun reader speaks

Res ipsa loquitur.

Link here. Isn't it inspiring, the way Rob Ford brings out the best in people?

#VoteTO: The prospect of Mayor Rob Ford, and the long road back to sanity

Via Chet Scoville at The Vanity Press, a piece by Edward Keenan in The Eye Weekly about what happens when Rob Ford becomes mayor.

Not going to try and replicate the whole thing here. Chet's underlined some of the more important points, notably the flimsy and questionable assumptions upon which the whole "wasteful spending, city falling apart, taxpayer rage, yargle bargle bleghhh ... " narrative rests.

But there's something else about the piece that's even more disturbing, and it dovetails – again – with my continuing obsession with the celebration of stupidity. As Keenan argues, it's a mistake to see Ford as some scheming Machiavellian with a hidden agenda. The simple truth is, and I think Keenan's onto something here, that Ford has no coherent agenda at all. He is not going to find hundreds of millions of dollars in savings by cutting out catered lunches for councillors, replacing streetcars with more buses, or firing the guy who waters the plants at City Hall.

And whether you agreed with David Miller or not, the record shows that he managed to herd the cats – er, work with councillors to get things done.  Even (God forgive me) Mayor Mel showed some proficiency that way. If Rob Ford's ever been able to work and play well with the other kids, I haven't seen it.

No, the most unsettling thing about Ford's ascendancy – and Keenan touches upon it – is the continuing buzz about his "authenticity." I've written before about how none of the lies, drunken rants, belligerent public misbehaviour or gaffes seem to stick to him, but instead underline his "regular guy" cred. He really does believe that bicycles shouldn't be on the road. And when he talks about servicing his constituents and cutting waste, he's not posturing or triangulating – he's being genuine. In Keenan's own words:

Except when childishly denying personal-life indiscretions or poorly thought-out comments, he speaks his simple truth as plainly as he can. In short, he is incapable of spin and his branding — such as it is — of himself as a plain-spoken, unapologetic truth teller is an honest representation.

And that's the biggest problem. Not that Rossi and Smitherman and Thomson are trying to skim some of his support by trying to reposition themselves as smarter versions of Rob Ford. Not that Ford's vision, warped though it is, seems to have become the defining lens through which this election is viewed. No, if what Keenan's arguing is true, then the key to Ford's appeal is that he's genuinely sincere in what he's saying.

To which, in my snobby condescending downtown elitist way, I say: So what? What's so great about being sincerely stupid?

What's so great about a worldview that has no capacity for reflection? What's so great about reducing the complexities of politics and municipal governance to a series of sound bites and simplistic clichés? What's the benefit of using words to inflame and obscure? What's admirable about trumpeting your shallowness, your ignorance, and your lack of education?

Once again, it comes down to citizenship and its attendant obligations. Thoughtful civic engagement shouldn't be optional, regardless of what level of government you're talking about. I want policy decisions made on the basis of sound analysis and a thorough consideration of goals, resources and targets, not on the basis of some asshole's gut reaction. And Rob Ford's popularity is all about simplistic gut reaction.

His ascendancy represents the triumph of intellectual laziness and disengagement, of gullibility and an obliviousness to being played for suckers, and of a willingness to swallow bullshit whose flimsy transparency ought to be self-evident to anyone with more than a few brain cells. The prospect of his victory holds out little more than four years of stagnation. And that's four years lost that could be spent building a healthier and more functional city.

Sorry, but if you're basing your voting decision on a simple visceral desire to kick ass instead of a thoughtful and reasoned consideration of the issues, then you are a fucking moron. Stupidity is not a civic virtue. There's nothing to be gained by pretending otherwise. If you find that offensive, too bad. (H/t thwap, again.)

This is the damage done by 30 years of right-wing nonsense. And let's not kid ourselves, my friends. This isn't conservatism. This is destructive atavistic bullshit.

Ford's ascendancy, explained

For the last day or so, I've been thinking about Alex Himelfarb's wonderfully thoughtful essay on why people vote against their own interests. Again, nothing I can say to improve upon it.

And now, a perfect illustration: from the Star today, it seems that Rob Ford is “tapping into suburban fury.”

So what is this “fury,” and why, since the Star never explains, should anyone take it seriously?

Is it just the usual “I don't wanna pay taxes for those condescending downtown elitists / lazy overpaid unionized thugs / tax-and-spend socialists / artsy-fartsy communists, yargle bargle bleghhh, drool ... ” horseshit?

If that's it, then fuck that and the people thinking it. A toxic brew of inchoate rage, ignorance and resentment is not the same thing as committed citizenship. And it's time we stopped coddling it and pretending it's something that needs to be humoured or respected.

Honestly, are people no longer capable of thinking except in clichés? Has anyone noticed how easily “mad as hell and not going to take it any more” morphs into “lazy, stupid, belligerent and unwilling to do anything that actually requires thoughtful engagement?”

That's why Ford's leading. That's what Stephen Harper taps into. That's why Sarah Palin is, well, Sarah Palin. And that's what's behind the outbreak of teabaggery to the south, along with a healthy dose of bigotry, racism, and well-orchestrated fear and scapegoating of The Other – all conveniently misdirected so that no one can see who really benefits from just how dysfunctional things have become.

It's a simple, easy-to-grasp narrative, unaffected by facts, devoid of context, and willingly propagated by the Fox Noise wannabes at Sun Media. An easily exploited, all-purpose current of spite, resentment and anti-social sentiment – in other words, the perfect basis upon which to build a healthy community. Not.

The Rob Ford slow-mo train wreck

Staying up late to watch a replay of a mayoral candidates' debate from earlier this week on CP24.

Mea culpa: a few weeks ago, I was chortling at the prospect of Mayor Rob Ford because I thought how entertaining it would be. The guy's feet would be in his mouth so often, he'd need a welcome mat on his chin. Reporters would be fighting to get on the city hall beat. Every time he served up a gaffe, it would be a straight shot to the front page. It would make Mayor Mel look like Winston Churchill.

I hate to say it, but he's still got a way of capturing my attention. (No shit. Rossi's talking now and I don't even need to mute the sound in order to focus on the keyboard.) Unfortunately, he's capturing a lot of attention, and somehow he's turned into the frontrunner. And, as a comment on another worthwhile blog puts it, a certain columnist thinks he's the cat's pyjamas.

Not much point in writing about what an embarrassment he'd be. Other observers have made that point already. What's worth pointing out, I think, is the nasty current he's tapping into. It's one that Blatchford  rides as well, and is going to continue riding for as long as it puts kibble in her dog's dish.

Both Ford and Blatchford channel and exploit a mean-spirited, anti-intellectual approach to politics, a small-minded worldview that shuns reflection or nuance and champions gut reaction. It's the mindset of the torches-and-pitchforks crowd. Catching Ford lying or contradicting himself or seemingly failing to understand the normal complexities of municipal governance doesn't matter to people like this, because all it does, according to Blatchford, is burnish his "regular-guy" cred. (You want to see the same dynamic at work in another setting? Watch Don Cherry on Coaches Corner sometime.)

While visceral reactivity may have a momentary emotional kick, though, it's no basis for well-considered public policy, and listening to people like Ford and Blatchford, you start to understand where mob rule begins. There's a point beyond which the rejection of the complex for the simple veers into simple-mindedness, and they're both well past it. But there's something else at work here as well, and it ties into currents that go well beyond the confines of Toronto's current municipal election campaign.

Once upon a time, ignorance, stupidity and belligerence used to be character flaws. They were things to be ashamed of, things you wanted to hide, things to work on, things to overcome. Nowadays, they're actually celebrated as evidence of authenticity, of Real American / Canadian character. It's part of the explanation for Sarah Palin's ascendancy, and it's a big part of Rob Ford's shtick too. And thanks to the extent to which the Fox noise machine and its wannabe Canadian counterparts at Sun Media have managed to push the boundaries of civil discourse, pointing that out doesn't matter any more. It's just another example of the snooty left-wing liberal urban elites, sneering at hard-working Real Canadians while showering their hard-earned tax dollars on effete theatrical festivals that glorify Islamic terrorism.

Rob Ford may well self-destruct over the next couple of months, because I don't see him growing his drooling base, but reversing a political and cultural movement that's turned ignorance into a civic virtue is going to take a hell of a lot longer.