Rob Ford - A Devil's Eulogy

Picture yourself sitting at a bar, enjoying a pint.

Next to you sits a large, sweaty man.  He's affable enough, even charming in an arm-punchy, back-slappy sort of way, and you strike up a conversation.

Over the course of the next booze-soaked half hour, you learn through conversation that this man thinks that AIDS is the fault of the afflicted, mainly "gays and people who do needles."

You learn that this man fears a hostile takeover by "Orientals" because they "work like dogs."

You learn that this man has had the cops at his house dozens of times because he has a penchant for beating up his wife.

You learn that this man occasionally drinks entire mickeys of vodka in three minutes flat and then gets in his van to drive kids home from football practice.

You learn that this man loves to grope women at social functions, and to tell his female employees about his predilection for "eating box."

Now tell me something.  If this man offered his hand in friendship, would you shake it?  Would you pat him on the back?  Embrace him?  Offer him a job?  A ride home?  Would you ever buy this guy a beer?

And if you came into the bar the following night and the barkeep informed you that the stranger you met the evening before had passed away, would you warmly remember the time he was nice enough to help the bartender carry a keg out of the basement while regaling the room with his tales of how the "fucking minorities" he coached at the local high school would be nowhere without him, or about that time he got wasted and mocked his "paki" cab driver?

Would you shed even a single tear for this abomination?

This is the false conundrum facing the intelligentsia and glitterati of Torontonian and Canadian society today as they come to grips with the passing of one of the worst people they ever had to read about in the papers or face across a council chamber: how do we appear compassionate for the compassionless?

His kids are the easiest to feel for, of course.  How can you not?  They are innocent victims of a tyrannical bigot who beat up their mother and then dragged her in front of cameras to brag about his sexual exploits with her.  They are the blameless collateral damage of a human shock and awe campaign of public self- and not-so-self-destruction.  They loved their dad I'm sure, even through the systematic abuse he heaped on their family while the cellphone cameras rolled and the YouTube clips buffered.  I feel absolutely terrible for how this loss makes them feel today.

But that doesn't change the time Ford got drunk and tried to kidnap his kids to Florida.  Or the multiple police visits to the home which found their mother covered in bruises.  Losing one's father must feel terrible.  I don't know what it's like.  But neither do I know what it's like to lose the serial assaulter of one's mother.

Still, if you want to write about how your thoughts are with them, I can't blame you, as mine are with them too.

The way he died is terrible as well.  I'm not crying over the fact that the man is gone.  But no one should have to die like that.

And yet, the politicians and the journalists and the celebrities must play the game, must find the silver lining, must look for the good and downplay the bad and join in the rush to confer meaning.  They have to find the tragedy because a human being stopped being alive regardless of how much havoc that human being wrought while he still could accomplish the feat.

Stephen Harper lauded his courage.  I'm not sure what courage he's referring to.  The courage Rob Ford showed in using his family money to treat his own addiction while he closed 38 community drug prevention programs aimed at helping the poor?  The courage he showed in not once attending the Pride Parade, one of the largest economic engines of Toronto's tourist season, while claiming he needed to spend those weekends at the cottage?  The courage he showed in attacking a man half his size for legitimately reporting on his attempted abuse of his position to purchase parkland for his own property?  The courage he showed in then denouncing that reporter as a pedophile?

Rona Ambrose paid tribute to his love of his community and dedication to his constituents.  As mentioned in my first post on this blog, Ambrose has draped herself in the mantle of "voice of the Canadian working woman."  Well, what about Canadian working woman Sarah Thomson, whom Ford groped during a photo op at a cocktail party?  I suppose that falls under "personally engaging with constituents" Rona?  What about Canadian working woman Olivia Gondek, the Ford advisor whom he said he was going to "eat out" and that he "banged her pussy"?  Was that simply one of the "many problems" Ford was trying to solve?

Ford's successor, John Tory, praised the "real efforts" Ford expended to "do what he thought was best for Toronto."  As if the entire, months-long nightmare of his absolute refusal to give up power and get help while Toronto turned into a worldwide laughing stock around him was some sort of fever dream and not the most enduring vision most people around the globe will have of the city for a generation.

This was a rich white man who had never worked a real job, coasting on a family fortune, who called the very idea of a homeless shelter in his ward an insult, and suggested that rather than having a public meeting on the subject, they should have a public lynching.

This was a father of two who called a children's author a bitch when she went to City Hall to speak against library cuts.

This was a "family man" mayor who flipped off one of his constituents and her daughter for having the temerity to tell him to stop using his cell phone while driving.

This was a man of the people who claimed that "if you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn't get AIDS probably" and then killed funding for 42 AIDS prevention programs.

This was a role model who read documents while driving on busy rush hour freeways and arrogantly refused to get himself a driver.

This was an urban magistrate who blamed cyclists for getting hit by cars, and then removed their bike lanes.

This was a city councillor who drunkenly yelled at a man at a hockey game, asking if he wanted "his little wife to go over to Iran and get raped and shot?" before later denying he'd even been at the game (a denial belied and disproven by the fact that he'd handed out his business card before his outburst).

This was a mayoral candidate who ran on a platform of integrity in government and then was promptly convicted of violating conflict-of-interest laws two years into his term.

A lot of the coverage over the past week has been along the lines of "Rob Ford was passionate, if flawed, and managed to do some good.  He loved his city and was a dedicated public servant and family man."

I'd like to suggest a counter-narrative.

Rob Ford was one of the most destructive forces ever to descend on the city of Toronto.  His flaws were the most likeable, relateable thing about him.  I don't care that he smoked crack.  I don't care that he partied with gangbangers.  Hell, I've smoked crack and partied with gangbangers.  I care that he dismantled beloved and cherished city programs and services that lopsidedly benefited the weakest and most vulnerable segments of his constituency.

He was a family man in that he had a family, but no picture of a healthy familial relationship includes multiple assaults and public humiliations of that man's partner.

He was a gay bashing, wifebeating, sexual harassing, racist hypocrite who was a wide net negative as far as his impact on the community he supposedly loved.  He was a rich freeloader who punched down at every opportunity to build up his own reputation and to support his political ambitions.

He was a liar, and he was a bully.

Only one thing changed when Rob Ford died.  A terrible human being was transmogrified into a terrible-human-being-shaped pile of meat.  That transition did nothing to accord the man he was with any more deserved respect than when he was still walking and talking and eating and breathing and refusing to apologize or make amends for years of shitting on the little guy, many little guys, almost all of the little guys over which he held power.

The above-mentioned compendium of heinous deeds, despicable proclamations, harmful policies, violent aggressions and hypocritical actions, all 1200 or so words of it, isn't even close to being exhaustive.  This wasn't a guy who did some good things and did some bad things and who deserves as much consideration as he does scorn.  This wasn't some fucked up asshole who nonetheless was and is worthy of some empathy.  This was an anthropomorphic sack stuffed to bursting with hateful prejudices and ignorance, with the power and the will to close down the place where you pick up your HIV-drug cocktail or the place you go so you can sleep without dying of exposure.

He inflicted himself on all of us - on his wife, on his kids, on his constituents, on his community, on his city, on the media, on our roads and our subways and our radio stations and our AIDS clinics and our drug prevention programs and our homeless shelters and our libraries and our schools and our garbage trucks and our minds and our eyes and our ears and our hearts.

I know I'm supposed to be playing along with everyone else, respecting the dead, waiting until the internet-approved mourning period has passed before embarking on this sort of character assassination.  But the only people I respect or feel compassion for are the wide swaths of victims, from his family on out, who had the misfortune of falling within his sphere of influence.

Feel sad and tear up if you must.  The only feeling I'm left with as I watch very recent history be willfully forgotten or papered over in real time - Ford's most egregious transgressions memory-holed for the sake of propriety - is nausea.