{"id":143700,"date":"2013-12-31T10:45:44","date_gmt":"2013-12-31T15:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=143700"},"modified":"2015-02-09T13:01:18","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T18:01:18","slug":"2013-year-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/cultural-correspondent\/12\/31\/2013-year-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2013 Year In Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rob_ford_kelly\"<\/p>\n

The mayor ranted that he would kill Mike Tyson<\/a>. He ranted he\u2019d only need 10 minutes. Then only five. <\/p>\n

The mayor confessed he smoked crack cocaine. \u201cProbably in one of my drunken stupors.\u201d He wasn\u2019t sure which one. But one of them, anyway. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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\u2014higher than President Barack Obama\u2019s, according to a Forum Research survey of 1,049 Toronto voters. He even mulled running for Canadian Prime Minister. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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 \u201cgot stuff done\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"Rob<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s own personal contributions to some of the city\u2019s own\u2026 entrepreneurs. <\/p>\n

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\u2019t care. <\/p>\n

Rob Ford was a degenerate mayor, sure, but he was their effective degenerate mayor. After years of politicians\u2019 lofty promises but deflated achievements, Rob Ford was Toronto\u2019s functional delinquent, who pulled the city back from the precipice. Never mind that he fell into his own personal abyss.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n

Odd years are boring years. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\"Obama<\/p>\n

2012 was a year of frenzied news cycles punctuated with a few too many solemn \u201cI\u2019m Barack Obama, and I approve this message\u201d 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\u2019s \u201cOppa Gagnum Style\u201d music video ascended to the first YouTube Billion View Club. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But 2013 was a year of halting, stop-and-go gridlock. The lights dimmed, as even the Super Bowl lost power. The volume dialed down from months of Congressional impasses and wonkish technicalities. Restless pundits fantasized Hillary-Chris Christie 2016 match-ups three years early. The American economy lurched forward\u2014unemployment tick-ticking down to the 7%\u2019s\u2014however fitfully, and however painfully slow. <\/p>\n

If 2008 was the year of Too Big Too Fail, or 2009 the year of Change, 2013 was the year of The Great Reveal. A year when the sweeping promises and campaign posters gave way to the grinding status quo of More Of The Same. <\/p>\n

2013 was the year the mystique and aura were stripped away. If it sounded too good to be true in 2013, and it was not a cronut\u2014the half croissant, half doughnut speciality that sold for 8 times the retail value on the black market\u2014it was. <\/p>\n

President Obama, once bally-hoed as the fresh-face, clarion call for Change, started his second term as a grayer-haired, tongue-tied lame duck. The very man elected to lift us from decades of Bush-Clinton political dynasties, now the totem of inexperienced youth that has America yearning for a return to them. <\/p>\n

Edward Snowden, a traitorous contractor to some and valorous whistle-blower to others, exposed the Orwellian breadth and depth of the National Security Agency\u2019s 30,000-strong surveillance organization. From an undisclosed apartment in Moscow, Snowden commandeered the news cycle with a steady stream from his \u201cone-of-everything\u201d stack of NSA revelations: How Google and Yahoo were hacked not simply by the Chinese but the very U.S. government. How the government bugged German Chancellor\u2019s Angela Merkel\u2019s phone. How every phone call, every email you ever wrote was secretly collected.<\/p>\n

\"Obama<\/p>\n

Historians may look back on 2013 as another driftless year of the American Empire. A wasted year when the President took selfies as Washington froze. When a Do-Nothing Congress\u2019 most notable achievement was shutting-down the government. <\/p>\n

When emboldened dictators from Damascus to Moscow to Pyongyang stepped into the void left by an introverted America, chastened from fighting endless wars abroad. The Arab Spring wilted to an endless summer. The clamors of youthful revolution muffled by aging despots with fists full of petrodollars. <\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin was emboldened\u2014never more ensconced in power\u2014ruling by carrot and stick at will. Putin doled out gifts by amnesty and pardon ahead of his vanity project the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Consolidating the nation\u2019s media outlets under Kremlin control and embracing U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden, the next. <\/p>\n

China\u2019s President Xi Jinping, buoyed by a rising tide of nationalism, sabre-rattled with Japan over a clutch of inhabited rocks. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad\u2014115,000 Syrian deaths and a Washington double take later\u2014remained as entrenched as ever. North Korea\u2019s dictator Kim Jong-un proved more volatile than even his father, with Dennis Rodman\u2014the mercurial Chicago Bull who once married himself\u2014America\u2019s best hope for a diplomatic rebound. <\/p>\n

\"Kim<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In sports, Lance Armstrong, Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Tyson Gay\u2014the once bulked-up, mythologized sports heroes of yesteryear, the suspended, lawyered-up cheats of today. Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te\u2019o became perhaps the first Heisman contender to have to make up a girlfriend before killing her off, spurring a new meme Te\u2019o\u2019ing. <\/p>\n

\"Teoing\"<\/p>\n

But, take hope. It wasn\u2019t all bad in 2013: <\/p>\n

San Francisco transformed itself into Gotham City to make 5-year-old-leukemia-survivor-turned-Bat-Kid Miles\u2019 dreams come.<\/p>\n