The phenomenon of Rob Ford really cries out for a new explanation of politics and scandal and democracy. We have a politician who has committed numerous egregious offenses and he continues to poll about even with his most serious challenger. Everyone professes shock and outrage but most voters don’t care. A typical comment by a Ford supporter: “The media make too a big deal out of it.” It has become, of course, impossible to pretend the media is lying. So it’s just “not that big of a deal”.
Anthony Wiener had to resign his congressional seat because he sent women pictures of his crotch– and persisted in lying about it after the evidence was clear. Eliot Spitzer, a very effective State Attorney General who showed he was willing to take on the big brokerages and banks– all by his lonesome self– had to resign because he admitted seeing an escort. Wiener and Eliot clearly gave up too early. They clearly were wrong to look ashamed and embarrassed. They should have given the media the finger. They should have said, “that’s my persona life and none of your business.”
Ford has an achievement: any new scandal will be ineffective because everybody’s heard just about the worst things you can hear about a politician. So a new video shows him smoking crack? Duh! We knew that. And he makes obscene comments about a female challenger for mayor? Ha ha, what a character! He’s drunk and stupid and belligerent? Attaboy! He’s our very own Don Cherry– except for the drunk part.
As someone pointed out on CBC radio today, there has not been a broad-based, resonant cry for him to resign from other politicians, which is curious. It was explained that Kathleen Wynn, of the provincial liberals, can’t go after him because she will need some of his supporters to win the next election, which is imminent. Tim Hudak, the opposition leader, and Harper, the federal prime-minister, won’t go after him because, first of all, he is a fellow conservative and he helps raise money and move volunteers for the cause, and, secondly, there are relationships going back to his father, a long time Conservative Party operative.
There is something akin to the Goebbels “Big Lie” theory here, except that nobody really believes it’s a lie. They just don’t care. Ford has been famously attentive to the concerns of his constituents (he has always made a point of responding to phone calls and messages), and who wants to pay more taxes? Who doesn’t believe that you could cut jobs and outsource without consequence? Who doesn’t fantasize standing up to the bureacrats, those smart-assed educated elite snobs who make me feel as stupid as Rob Ford?
What is remarkable to me is that Ford, like a New York mob leader in the 1950’s, seems confident and smug and contemptuous of the establishment. We think he knows there are rules about conduct and behaviour and attitude and we think he knows he has broken them, but I think he really believes that well behaved intellectuals and managers and politicians are all frauds and that the style and manners of the elite are nothing more than tricks of the trade, charades, and kabuki theatre: now my serious, solemn mask, now my bemused mask, now my congenial sympathetic mask. That’s why he likes to say, I am what I am. What you see is what you get.
So my fantasy is not that all the Rob Fords in the world get their due: but that some day we may get a liberal Rob Ford who sets out to do for working people what assholes like Rob Ford and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter have been doing for years for the investor class.