This can only end well

[james_davis_nicoll]

Guess who is returning?

Comments

[fengi.livejournal.com]

If he doesn't do an entrance with Eminem's "Without Me" playing in the background, I'm going to be sorely disappointed.

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

Really, you guys have exceeded Texas politics with Rob, and that takes some doing :)

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

What, Ralph Klein wasn't drunk enough for you?

[quirkytizzy.livejournal.com]

From an American viewpoint, Ford is FASCINATING. It's proof that crazy comes in all nationalities and is, like, the one kind of scandal that Americans wouldn't tolerate. So it's really something interesting to watch!

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

I don't know. I don't think the ratings will be there for another season. The writers are already repeating themselves--the first crack video was a little shocking, but the second one? Meh.

With his schtick, he has to keep topping what he's done previously for people to keep tuning in, and that's getting harder and harder to do.

It just won't be the same, IMHO.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

As someone who lives in Toronto, the idea that the Ford Show can only improve its ratings through murder or mass destruction somehow fails to reassure.

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

True, but there have already been rumors of connections to suspicious deaths, and didn't he spitefully refuse to declare an emergency during a nasty blizzard? So both of those have arguably already been done.

You certainly have my sympathy.

What I have trouble figuring out is the number of people who, according to the polls, are *still* willing to vote for him. Do the Ford brothers have a political machine in part of the city that hates the rest and wants to punish it or something?

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Yes.

Only a minority of Toronto-the-mega-city (created with malice aforethought by the Harris government) is actually urban; most of it is suburban, and one result of this that you get the usual "I want continuously lower taxes and the riff-raff kept out" political dynamics at the municipal level. Amalgamation was carefully designed to guarantee that the folks who want an actual functioning city wouldn't be able to overcome the suburban voters who want a drive-through urban theme park.

So the core of Ford's support comes from suburban groups who see themselves as disenfranchised and their taxes as going to purposes of which they do not approve; this is even, to an extent, true. My sympathy is limited because their acceptable uses for taxes can't produce a functional polity and most of them see this as a feature.

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

To be fair, Rob Ford is not the typical product of this dynamic; that would be more Doug Holyday. What Ford brings to the mix is an aggressively anti-elite attitude and downscale-mannered style which appeals to the less educated and less well-off.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Doug Holyday was born in 1942.

Rob Ford was born in 1969.

I'm going to argue that Rob Ford is completely typical of the dynamic for his generation. (In a position of unusual privilege which greatly diminishes the consequences of his actions, but Ford Nation mostly envies the ability to get away with it, since as a cultural thing they see drug use as normative and unobjectionable if not status-conferring, because you do need the privilege to get away with it...)

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

Thank you for the summaries. It does seem to be the sort of situation one would prefer to encounter as an anecdote in a 22nd century political science text rather than by living through it.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

I think it was Rick Mercer who said something like "....there is a segment of the population that will vote for a brain-damaged gerbil if it promises to save them a buck."

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

With his schtick, he has to keep topping what he's done previously for people to keep tuning in, and that's getting harder and harder to do.

Not that hard. He could attend the next Wiscon, and harrass someone.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

It's been done....

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Over on Metafilter they have a betting pool going as to how many days it will be before the post-rehab drunken Rob Ford video shows up. I think the average is trending toward two weeks.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I think the news article has a formatting error. Instead of reporting Doug saying, "They're spending like crazy," they ought to have printed

THEY'RE SPENDING LIKE CRAZY!!!!

just to properly convey the level of hysteria latent in the rhetoric.

[aboutlikepleats.livejournal.com]

... not particularly latent.

Delusional and/or dishonest, but fairly overt.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Point.