Ford over man, Ford over

I have ranted about the disaster that is Toronto mayor Rob Ford on plenty of occasions.  I dearly hope that this can be the last time for mayor Ford has been removed from office for a violation of conflict of interest laws.  A lot of people are enjoying the scene of the mayor who promised to cut the fat and end the gravy train being turfed for misuse of city resources for personal projects but it makes me a little sad in two ways.

First off, I won't be able to look to the local news for my daily source of comedy anymore.  When the mayor can't be relied upon to be clueless, unpleasant, hypocritical, bigoted, and dangerous, what will be the source of mirth for Toronto?  We might have to resort to people who are *trying* to be funny instead of Ford.

Second, this means that my dream of one day opening a newspaper and reading about Ford being caught doing coke off of the stomach of a nonwhite immigrant male prostitute dressed as a sexy bicyclist is at an end.  Sure, he might still end up doing that, but it just isn't the same when a random guy does that as when the mayor does it.  (Damn those immigrant male prostitutes taking jobs from real Canadian male prostitutes... ?)

I don't know about you but after I wrote that paragraph I felt the compulsive need to Google 'nonwhite male sexy bicyclist' and see what pops up.  The internet is wonderful!

There are actually a lot of people defending Ford because the issue that brought him down was actually a pretty minor one.  He used city resources to solicit donations for the high school football team he volunteers for as coach and then voted against doing anything about it in council.  Of course the lesson we can take away from this is that sometimes a person can get away with an endless stream of awful things and be brought low by a seemingly minor transgression as in the case of Al Capone.

The one unfortunate thing in all this is that two years might be long enough for people to forget.  Ford will be allowed to run for mayor again in 2014 and I think two more gaffe and disaster filled years would have been enough to get him booted unceremoniously from office.  If someone else steps in for two years Ford might be able to salvage a decent campaign again in 2014 and win on the back of the suburbs pushing for a tough talking, gay bashing, angry white man.