In the End, He was Only Human
On 22 March 2016, Rob Ford – former mayor of Toronto and city councillor for Etobicoke North – died of cancer. My condolences to his family, particularly his children.
Rob Ford was a surprisingly complicated man, considering he was actually something of a simpleton with no capacity for subtlety or nuance. He was a demagogue who was allegedly awkward and uncomfortable in person. He was profoundly privileged, but was more at home in a dive bar than a golf club. He was a champion to some, and a merciless bastard to others. He desperately tried to speak truth to power, but was a pathological liar who wouldn’t work with anyone who challenged him. Even fate seemed to take note of his contradictory nature: he died soon after what appeared to all as a turn to better health.
I never liked Rob Ford. He was ignorant, callous, and profoundly hypocritical. He often pandered to the lowest common denominator, and exploited those who had the most faith in him. He often thought he knew better than anyone, but somehow managed to get blackmailed by crack dealers twice. He drove drunk so often that he kept a toothbrush in his car, vainly assuming that brushing your teeth after downing a mickey of vodka in fifteen minutes would somehow prevent a police officer from smelling alcohol on your breath. He was a truly dangerous man.
That said, he was never going to be anything better than the Rob Ford we came to know all too well. I hate to blame someone’s flaws on their family, but Mr. Ford was not raised to be a well-adjusted, well-rounded person, nor were any of his siblings. His mother was at the very least an enabler, and his father was at the very least emotionally abusive. Between Rob and his siblings, Doug seems to be the most functional and stable, which is quite the statement. As a city of almost three million people watched Rob Ford self-implode, his mother and brother dismissed his obvious and glaring issues because addressing such issues could threaten their megalomaniacal interests. Mr. Ford was a grown man who should have been capable of recognizing and addressing his personal issues, but better men than him have done worse things in the name of family, and he thought he was working for the benefit of a major city.
It wasn’t just Rob Ford’s family who enabled – if not tacitly encouraged – his awful behaviour. His supporters sneered and hissed when people challenged him. They accused people of lying when his troubling tendencies became public knowledge, only to shrug their shoulders when practically everything he was accused of turned out to be true. They stood by him when he abused his position to help his friends, stopped showing up to work, lied through his teeth, and issued forced, blatantly phony apologies. Inexcusable as Ford’s behaviour was, he wasn’t aware of the extent of his own wrongdoing, and he had a million people telling him how fantastic he was. People didn’t just support Ford when he blundered through misdeed after misdeed: they attacked those who dared to call him out! A lot of people would behave terribly with that level of support, and Rob Ford was… well, Rob Ford.
Frankly, this makes me feel sorry for him. I may have despised Rob Ford’s politics, but I sincerely believe that he thought he was helping people. As a city councillor and for the first year of his mayoralty, he worked his butt off, because he thought people needed his help. When he needed those same people to help him – or even admit he needed help, they watched him go up in flames. Rob Ford had a lot of enemies, but none were greater than his own supporters. They watched him suffer, and did nothing because they thought he was saving them a few dollars. I’ve had my share of parasitic friends, but sweet tap-dancing Marduk (slayer of Tiamat), I can’t imagine what it must be like to have “friends” like that.
I met Rob Ford once. It was Christmas Eve of 2010 or 2011. I was at the liquor store, stocking up before it closed for the holidays, and getting in some last-second Christmas shopping. Rob Ford was at the peak of his popularity, and his alcoholism wasn’t public knowledge at the time. He walked in without fanfare, quickly collecting a mickey of Smirnoff and a twenty-sixer of Russian Prince. I’m admittedly familiar with alcoholism. I used to call running out of rye “a drinking problem.” I know an alcoholic’s emergency run when I see one; hell, I was partially engaged in one myself. He kept his eyes to the ground, people whispered behind their hands, and we both exited at roughly the same time.
He was making awkward small talk with some supporters when I left, and I – as someone he’d consider a pinko – was inclined to give him a piece of my mind. Then I thought “right now, we’re not very different. The main thing separating us is that I don’t have a dozen people judging my bad habits as they indulge their own.” I wished him well, and he gave me a fist bump instead of a handshake because my hands were full. Maybe it was the Christmas spirit, maybe it was an understanding that he didn’t listen to criticism anyway, maybe the thought of getting into a shouting match in a liquor store parking lot seemed a little white trash even for me. Whatever it was, there was no hostility.
My point is two-fold. First, I certainly had moments of sympathy for a guy who was basically an awkward fat kid in way over his head (been there). Those moments were few and far between, but they were sincere. Second, his problems must have been known to the people close to him long before he started beating up his friend and drug dealer with a bag of McDonald’s.
Rob Ford was a profoundly, obviously troubled man who was used by the people who were supposed to care about him. The most human politician Toronto has ever seen was treated as a tool by his friends and family. He wasn’t a monster: he was a man, albeit a very weak and damaged one. Many people won’t remember him fondly, but we can’t forget that he was practically doomed to be broken. We don’t have to like, respect, or defend him, but we should remember our shared humanity, and try not to judge him too harshly. In his situation, many of us wouldn’t have fared any better.
Goodbye, Rob Ford. Toronto municipal politics is going to seem awfully boring without you.