Okay, the word’s out. As just revealed in this story in the Toronto Star, the TPM delegation to Toronto arrives tomorrow to bestow the Golden Duke award to Mayor Rob Ford. As you know, Ford won a Golden Duke in an unprecedented 4 categories in the 2013 Golden Dukes Awards. As you probably also know, Mayor Ford smoked crack on video and also bragged about cunnilingus in a mayoral news conference, which probably makes the fact about the awards wins go without saying.
Our delegation arrives in Toronto tomorrow morning. And they’ll be meeting with the official welcoming committee Friday evening. If all goes according to plan that we’ll be after they’ve presented the Golden Dukes statuette to Mayor Ford.
As you can see, this year the Golden Duke statuette comes in three different editions. Even a mobile Golden Duke for the scandal plagued politician on the go. (see right).
This year’s Dukes were sculpted by Maryland-based sculptor Christian Benefiel, who also teaches sculpture at Shepherd University. They are cast aluminum with a gold paint, to capture the illustrious exterior and base inner being of the typical Golden Dukes nominee. For similar reasons, in each edition, the pedestal on which Duke stands is also slightly crooked.
On a more serious note, in late December Toronto was hit by a massive ice storm. And the city took a real beating. The plan to present the Golden Duke to this year’s winner in person was made long before Rob Ford became the prohibitive favorite and certainly before the storm hit the city which is why we delayed our arrival by a week. Our delegation will also be making a substantial cash contribution to a charity helping Torontonians hit hard by the storm.
But our real goal of course is to honor Mayor Ford. So look forward to a steady stream of updates as our team touches down in the land of Canada, learns the local folk ways, visits key locales in the Ford saga and presents the Mayor his award.
