'Star values' on parade

My attempt to de-escalate the prolonged effort to crucify Toronto Mayor Rob Ford (in which, admittedly, he often has participated himself by his outrageous antics) seems, to the intense frustration of its perpetrators, to be succeeding. Unfortunately, the Mayor's most vicious media critic won't admit defeat without first dragging the issue into the court system, all the while engaging in a crude hate campaign against selected targets, including me.

As co-host of the Vision Channel television program Zoomer, I invite people to sit down with me in civilized conversation, which often included unwelcome questions. But I do not conduct an antagonistic debate. This is a format that viewers seem to enjoy, and it was on this basis that guests — including Mayor Ford, last week — have agreed to speak with me.

On the opening subject, the range of embarrassing and improper incidents and utterances that has mired the Ford regime in controversy, the Mayor volunteered that he had done and said many "stupid, silly, juvenile" things, made an awful fool of himself, and embarrassed the city; and he unreservedly apologized for it. From there, the conversation proceeded in a relaxed way. We discussed his renunciation of drink and drugs, and his determination never to be involved again in any such incident as those that have generated this crisis in his career. He spoke of his daily, early-morning work-outs at the gym, and the weight that he has lost and intends to lose. I asked him about his claims to having reduced the city's expenses, with the very well-researched analysis of the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale in my hand; the information, which I quoted to the Mayor, effectively whittled his claim from $1-billion of savings to $638-million (still a very respectable accomplishment).

I also invited him to speculate on the motives of the chief of police, Bill Blair, in openly expressing disappointment with the mayor personally and thereby serving as an apparent ally in the Star-led attempt to brand the mayor as a criminal and substance-abuser who is unfit for public office. As the chief should know better than anyone, such designations require the application of due process, not just inflammatory denunciations in the media. (Mr. Ford suggested that the chief was annoyed because the mayor had cut $21-million of spending requested by the police.)

I asked the Mayor which episodes of his many abrasions with the media had been most upsetting to him, and he said that the worst provocation to date was when Star reporter Daniel Dale was reported to the mayor (by a neighbour) to be lurking behind the mayor's house in a location that might allow Mr. Dale to observe his two young children at play in their back yard. Mr. Ford said that he found this very intrusive and worrisome, and wondered at the stranger's motives. I took this to mean that Ford was uncertain of what he was dealing with until he saw that it was a journalist; and that he considered Mr. Dale to be unacceptably nosy, but there was no thought that Mr. Dale himself was himself a deviant.

© 2024 Conrad Black