The 2013 Year In Review
The mayor ranted that he would kill Mike Tyson. He ranted he’d only need 10 minutes. Then only five.
The mayor confessed he smoked crack cocaine. “Probably in one of my drunken stupors.” He wasn’t sure which one. But one of them, anyway.
The mayor was black-mailed by gang members. They wanted $5,000 and a car for the video of him allegedly smoking crack cocaine. $150,000, for the other one.
And yet Toronto mayor Rob Ford was not arrested. He was not shot. He was not even impeached. Toronto mayor Rob Ford was more popular than ever. His approval ratings spiked up 3% since his crack admission—higher than President Barack Obama’s, according to a Forum Research survey of 1,049 Toronto voters. He even mulled running for Canadian Prime Minister.
Call him delusional. Call him a drunk. But, to the people of Toronto at least, they called him, well, not the Every Man, exactly, but genuine. He was a no-holds-barred maverick who called it like he saw it. And he “got stuff done”.
In his tenure to date, Rob Ford had saved the city of Toronto a billion dollars. He, ahem, cracked down on city cronyism and stripped down the mayor’s office budget to a no-frills, no-thrills operation where everyone drove themselves to work. Rob Ford also eliminated that pesky car registration tax, patched up relations with the labor union, and he even outsourced waste collection west of Yonge Street. Never mind Ford’s own personal contributions to some of the city’s own… entrepreneurs.
Rob Ford never did fight Mike Tyson. He did, however, take a bludgeoning as an international punch line. But in Toronto circles, anyway, Rob Ford became a cause celebre in 2013 for a city tired of the same old, same old, refreshed by a rough-around-the-edges politician who simply didn’t care.
Rob Ford was a degenerate mayor, sure, but he was their effective degenerate mayor. After years of politicians’ lofty promises but deflated achievements, Rob Ford was Toronto’s functional delinquent, who pulled the city back from the precipice. Never mind that he fell into his own personal abyss.
Odd years are boring years.
The bane of news networks everywhere. There are no World Cups, no Olympics, no presidential or midterm elections. Odd years are years of waiting, years of speculating, and jockeying-behind-closed-doors. Suped up, flavored prime-time news hours breathlessly sensationalized–not so much for the news but for the hours they fill up.
2012 was a year of frenzied news cycles punctuated with a few too many solemn “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message” commercials. It was a year of athletic majesty in London capped by Usain Bolt heroics on land, Michael Phelps by water. And it was a year Korean artist Psy’s “Oppa Gagnum Style” music video ascended to the first YouTube Billion View Club.
