Breaking Bold

Breaking Bold
By Emma X

Emma X
There are no bad politicians.  There
are just bad choices.

By now I’m sure you have heard that Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto was finally forced to admit that he smoked crack cocaine.  After denying the allegation for months, the existence of a video of the unfortunate event forced Mr. Ford to come clean with his constituency.  His excuse was classic.  He didn’t remember smoking the illegal substance because he was roaring drunk at the time.  Whew!  What a relief for the citizens of Toronto.  Your mayor is not a chronic crack head.  He is just a blackout drunk.  So if would-be terrorists will please politely adjust to the Mayor’s life style and attack during the normal Monday through Friday work week when Ford is presumably sober, denizens of the fourth largest city in North America will sleep soundly in their beds.  No worries here.

The Right Honorable
Mayor Rob Ford on a sober day.
His example may be a good object lesson
for impressionable Canadian children.

The tape of Mr. Ford smoking a rock in a known crack house was seized with other evidence in an illegal gun bust.  The good Mayor did not mention that he broke the law he is sworn to uphold, just that he used some bad judgment.  I mean, we’ve all been there, right?  I can’t count the number of times I have been caught smoking with gun runners in a known crack house.  Anyway, how he got to the establishment, and mention of the company he keeps were not part of his Mea Culpa.  He will not step down from office, and he will not promise to quit drinking.  He merely suggests that everyone get over it, while he gets back to the work he loves.

He seemed such a quiet man.
Nobody could have possibly seen this thing coming.
Instead of "who would you like to have a beer with?"
Canadian voters must also decide who they would
prefer to smoke a rock with.  It's just another
option.  After all, the motto of Toronto is
"Diversity-Our-Strength".

The icing on this reprehensible cup cake is that he made his confession at City Hall on ‘Bring Your Child to Work Day’.

Yes, sweetheart, the world is a
scary place and the people making decisions
about your life and well-being are drunk and corrupt.
Now that you've met the Mayor, let's go get some
ice cream.

When I was a child I thought that our leaders must be the smartest people in the world.  How else could they reach such an important level of responsibility?  With the wisdom of age I came to find out, as we all eventually do, that our leaders and elected officials can be far from responsible.  Any well connected person can gain office.  Their motives can be self-serving. Their ethics can be questionable.  They can be intellectual underachievers, narcissists, extremists, mobsters, alcoholics, womanizers, flashers, married closeted gays, bullies, crack smokers, thieves, pathological liars or sociopaths.  And since sour cream also rises to the top, many of our most prominent statesmen could proudly be all of the above.

It was just a Crackcident and it won't
happen again.  For some personalities, any attention,
even negative attention, serves an unfulfilled need.

Not every politician is morally corrupt, of course.  But those trying to serve their community are soon perverted by the system or weeded out.  Early on they come to realize that they are cogs in a political machine fueled by patronage and cronyism.  So I suppose the end of constituent innocence can’t happen too soon.  ‘Bring Your Child to Work Day’ may be an appropriate object lesson in this freakish political age.   We should think of it as ‘Scared Straight’ for future voters.

This is not about the good citizens of Canada.  Rob Ford didn’t invent anything.  There is nothing new under the sun.  But in the past, once caught in an illegal and embarrassing act, a politician’s career was over.  They would resign immediately. Now we enable them with the option of two weeks in rehab with weekends off, and deem that sufficient time and energy to atone for any public faux pas.  The Rob Ford story is just another ludicrous example of the death of shame in Western culture.

By the way, Mr. Ford's approval rating went up after his heart-felt public confession.  We get the government we deserve, folks.  Indeed we do.

Postscript:  On Friday another video was released of Ford revealing his mastery of the F-word in a drunken rage, a performance suggesting that his drug use might not be a one-off.  Clearly Mr. Ford needs help.  We sincerely hope he finds it outside of public office.

Yabba Dabba Jabba
Ya koon tacha poonoo nee sah.
Ya ee eema loh kah yah lee.
No biggie, eh?  Welcome to Toronto.