O Toronto Where Art Though?

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Toronto, what have you been smoking?

With the dramatics of the G20 Summit, the debacle in planning the 2015 Pan Am Games, and the sub par performances of the Maple Leafs, Blue Jays, and Raptors, of course The Big Smoke would go ahead and elect a mayor who's been quoted as saying:

"I can't support bike lanes.  Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks.  My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day."

"Cyclists are a pain in the ass for motorists."

To an anti-poverty activist: "Do you have a job, sir?  I'll give you a newspaper to find a job, like everyone else has to do between 9 and 5."

To a homeless protester: "I'm working.  Why don't you get a job?"

"AIDS is very preventable.  If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn't get AIDS probably, that's the bottom line."

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Rob Ford, the Mayor-elect of Canada's biggest city.

Did American conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh pull a John Travolta/Nicholas Cage Face/Off with Ford this fall?  Has Limbaugh given up on his conquest to rot American minds, and taken his political side show north of the 49th parallel?  

Is that a Cuban Limbaugh's chewin' on?  It may have been a present from his Canadian partner in crime, Rob Ford.

Toronto has set a poor and dangerous example for the rest of Canada.  As a titan on the world stage, the city needs to be progressive, trend setting, and remarkable.  Toronto, whether it wants to admit it or not, is the face of our nation.  If it sneezes, the rest of Canada catches a cold.

Instead, the city is slowly becoming a laughing stock to both Canadians and other nations within the global village. 

Canada's role on the world's stage has taken some recent hits.  The fiasco regarding our omission from the UN Security Council is just one glaring example. 

Ford's victory in Toronto is a defeat for the rest of Canada. 

 

4 comments:

  1. Getting the feeling you think Toronto's new mayor is a bit of an embarrassment. Toronto, like Winnipeg is a unicity. I'll bet Ford didn't get much support from urban Torontonians.

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  2. That's a good point, Richard. It worries me that a man with such archaic views was elected mayor of an incredibly important city.

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  3. It's really funny how Toronto will elect a mayor on the far right like Mel Lastman, then David Miller on the far left, and now Ford on the extreme right. Just no such thing as a moderate in Toronto politics it seems.

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  4. I've learned much about Toronto politics. Thanks!

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