Well.

[sabotabby]

Remember that bit in Transmetropolitan where the Beast gets elected and Spider's article is just the word "fuck" repeated 8000 times?



Toronto, what were you even fucking thinking?

Comments

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

My God! Ford appears to be the bastard son of Eric Pickles!

[sabotabby]

He is like Sarah Palin and Archie Bunker had a baby and it was so terrifyingly stupid that they both ran away screaming, leaving it to be raised by Glenn Beck.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

You. Owe. Me. A. New. Monitor.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I'm fascinated to see what the urban Canadian version of nativism turns out to look like in practice.

[sabotabby]

Keep the immigrants out, fuck the poor, fuck the queers, fuck cyclists, halt transit, privatize everything. The bright side is that this guy cannot control his temper and will eventually end up punching someone in a temper tantrum and getting arrested. I hope.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

May go like Evan Mecham. You can always hope.

[poetic-pixie-13.livejournal.com]

God, even though I knew that he thinks exactly like that it sounds even bleaker when you put it that way. Fuck.

[treehavn.livejournal.com]

The bright side is that this guy cannot control his temper and will eventually end up punching someone in a temper tantrum and getting arrested.

We live in hope. Someone online wrote that the best thing we can hope for is that he bumbles around for four years and fails to get anything passed, but I like your suggestion better.

I feel a little like I did when Boris 'watermelon smiles' Johnson got in for London, like the suburbs had help vote in someone who a. didn't understand how a city works, and b. didn't give a toss to learn.

[corwin77.livejournal.com]

I was telling Curgoth that I blame reality TV: All those people who watch American Idol and Survivor who checked Ford and thought they were voting him off.

[sabotabby]

One might hope.

[numb3r-5ev3n.livejournal.com]

I blame reality TV in that I'm of the opinion that people are mistaking politics for a reality show, and are trying to keep the batshit crazies in the spotlight for as long as they can so they can continue to watch the train wreck. Thing is, they don't seem to realize that they're in the train wreck, too.

I'm sorry that this seems to be going on in your neck of the woods as well.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

What is this 'thinking' of which you speak?

[sabotabby]

Perhaps it was acid in the city's water supply? Performance art? I got nothing.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Huh, I guess it's true Canada lags the US by about 10 years.

Man, that guy's vile.

[sabotabby]

We've had an evil SOB running the country for quite some time now.

Ford is worse, but rules on a smaller scale.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

That one picture of Harper with the kitten always makes me think "JESUS CHRIST SOMEONE SAVE THAT CAT BEFORE HE EATS IT OR THROWS IT INTO THE FIRE."

Local politicians always seem to be either better or worse, because they don't have to smooth the bumps off the way national politicians do. My home state (New Hampshire) has a habit of electing slime molds in human form to state office, but then they leave when they realize NH is basically constantly broke and has a weak governorship.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

the following conversation just took place in my home:

Dad: Your hero won the election.
Pyth: Oh good. ...You mean what'sisface, right? Not the knob?
Dad: Ford. Ford won.
Pyth: How?!

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

I am a bad person for not knowing about this, yet as regards my mental health, I suspect it's for the best.

My condolences. Dude sounds awful.

[cannibal-x.livejournal.com]

Ugh...

[culpster.livejournal.com]

Damn close to a simple majority, too. And turnout's up 9% (to 50%) from '06 so you can't blame it on apathy. I feel very small at the moment.

[poetic-pixie-13.livejournal.com]

I need a fucking drink.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

D: D: D: D: D:

Should we start a "move awesome Sabo & Zingerella to another city" fund? Halifax is very pretty.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

On the bright side it was still less than 50% of the city who thought it a good idea to elect a furious practitioner of Podnsappery

Mr Podsnap was well to do, and stood very high in Mr Podsnap's opinion. Beginning with a good inheritance, he had married a good inheritance, and had thriven exceedingly in the Marine Insurance way, and was quite satisfied. He never could make out why everybody was not quite satisfied, and he felt conscious that he set a brilliant social example in being particularly well satisfied with most things, and, above all other things, with himself.

Thus happily acquainted with his own merit and importance, Mr Podsnap settled that whatever he put behind him he put out of existence...Mr Podsnap had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him (and consequently sheer away) with those words and a flushed face. For they affronted him...As a so eminently respectable man, Mr Podsnap was sensible of its being required of him to take Providence under his protection. Consequently he always knew exactly what Providence meant. Inferior and less respectable men might fall short of that mark, but Mr Podsnap was always up to it. And it was very remarkable (and must have been very comfortable) that what Providence meant, was invariably what Mr Podsnap meant.

These may be said to have been the articles of a faith and school which the present chapter takes the liberty of calling, after its representative man, Podsnappery. They were confined within close bounds, as Mr Podsnap's own head was confined by his shirt- collar; and they were enunciated with a sounding pomp that smacked of the creaking of Mr Podsnap's own boots.

...Hideous solidity was the characteristic of the Podsnap plate. Everything was made to look as heavy as it could, and to take up as much room as possible. Everything said boastfully, 'Here you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I were only lead; but I am so many ounces of precious metal worth so much an ounce;--wouldn't you like to melt me down?'...All the big silver spoons and forks widened the mouths of the company expressly for the purpose of thrusting the sentiment down their throats with every morsel they ate.

[ironed_orchid]

Ugh.

I hate it when it turns out lots of people agree with the evil minded bigots.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I don't think thought had much to do with it. Between them, the Sun and The Star created this narrative that the city was broke and dysfunctional and it was all the fault of "City Hall". It got a very powerful emotional response, mainly from people who feel, rightly, threatened by the current economic climate. It's a typical petit bourgeois sort of populism and Ford jumped on it. Equally typically, nobody took him seriously until it was too late ("He's just an Austrian corporal, snicker"). Buried in there is a real reluctance of people who live in the nice bits of the down town core and mid town to take the concerns of the rest of the city seriously. "It's just people with SUVs in the suburbs" when, of course, it's really the families of the kids you teach and their equivalent in Etobicoke and, in no small measure, the less glitzy parts of the core who backed Ford. I know fanatical Ford supporters at Central Tech. I was really struck in the run up to the election by the geographical distribution of lawn signs. Ford's support was in the scruffier neighbourhoods. Smitherman won Rosedale and Forest Hill and the Kingsway and Guildwood Park quite easily I suspect.

So the question that has to be faced is how to mobilise the people who actually benefit from a progressive agenda in favour of that agenda and how to address the concerns, real or imaginary, of people who think the fat cats have taken over city hall.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly.

You can't win in Toronto if you ignore Etobicoke, Willowdale, Rexdale, Malvern, Downsview. SUVs or no SUVs, these people are real residents of the city, they have insecurities that can be pandered to, they do not feel that the city has done well by them, and they want someone who can by gum fix things and who will speak to them about things that matter to them.

Ford got that. Progressives have a huge blind spot about it. Anyone who's smart will spend the next four years in Etobicoke, or Malvern, or Willowdale, learning what people there need in order to feel like city hall is increasing their security and making their lives better.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

i don't even understand this.