Rob Ford on his new TV show Ford Nation: “I know in my heart everyone has personal problems. I urinated in a parking lot … what does that have to do with anything?”
I’m not sure it quite got everyone’s attention down here in the States. But it seems like today was the breakthrough day in the on-going, endless (and admittedly sublime) Rob Ford psychodrama. We linked to this boffo moment when ‘Mayor’ Ford ran across the Council Chamber to jump into an apparently imaginary melee involving his brother (City Councillor Doug Ford) and managed to clothesline City Councillor Pam McConnell. Beside that there wasn’t so much any one admission or profanity or bonghit or body check as the city government degenerating into a sort of post-modern hostage drama in which two bulbous goon brothers were holding this once proudly boring city hostage. At certain moments, I found myself thinking that the old John Candy/Eugene Levy era Second City TV was actually just a documentary about life in Canada.
As many wise people wrote during the height of the Trayvon Martin case, public morality plays don’t always align neatly with the deep-seated social injustices we connect them to. It was never clear to me that Zimmerman was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of racially profiling and then intentionally killing Trayvon Martin. Based on the evidence that was a difficult case to make. But that’s what Florida prosecutors charged him with. I don’t remember the ins and outs of Florida law. But what seemed more clear cut was something like manslaughter or negligent homicide. It always seemed possible to me that Zimmerman was just a coward with a gun and something to prove who got scared and killed a kid.
New George Zimmerman mugshot, from latest domestic violence incident.
I’ve been hearing from all day today that this afternoon has been the big final epic meltdown in the endless Mayor Ford crackalacka drama. But I guess a short time ago Mayor Ford had some kind of phantasm, imagining his brother, City Councilor Doug Ford, was being attacked in the Council Chamber. He ran across the Council Chamber and Ford – who has substantial inertia mass when at speed – inadvertently body slammed Councillor Pam McConnell. Watch.