Socraticsilence, in the recent Doug Ford post, asks:

So admittedly this is an outsiders perspective but I’ve always gotten the idea from you and other Canadian political commentators that Rob Ford is an amiable boob, a well-meaning moron with a bit of a mean streak but not overtly cruel and/or calculating- kind of a fat Canadian Dubya– right down to the inheriting everything and not realizing his privilege. So I guess what I’m asking is, and I don’t want to stretch the analogy too far here- is Doug, Rob’s Cheney– the competent, cruel, bloodless guy behind the power?

If that is the idea you have gotten, then Canadians have misrepresented Rob Ford to you. Ford is not an “amiable boob.” He is friendly enough, I suppose, but not so dramatically that he is one of those people who engenders joie de vivre in all he meets or anything like that. Ford is extremely stupid but he is also very mean – a callous dunce who doesn’t have the imagination to even consider other people’s viewpoints much less sympathize with them. His goodwill is essentially predicated on his own unmerited high self-opinion; he lives in a black and white world where he is always the good guy and can always, always justify the stupid shit he pulls off. I am quite sure that right now he totally believes he is being wronged in this crack video scandal, despite that it is pretty obvious now that A) the video exists and B) he is lying through his teeth about that.

As for Doug, he is not bloodless and he is barely competent. Cheney thinks about what he says before he says it. Doug Ford doesn’t think about anything and has most of his brother’s faults. He is only “competent” when compared to his idiot brother, who really does set a new low for all things related to governance, and any buff in reputation he gets is largely the result of being “the less stupid one” so damned often.

Now, you might be thinking “but wait, you have no respect for the Ford Brothers.” And that is not precisely true. Rob Ford is excellent at constituent service, for example – he genuinely loves it and takes pride in it, it is quite possibly the best thing about a generally awful person. You can at least respect Rob Ford on that basis, and there are clearly other elements of the man that are respectable, which makes him such a tragic figure in so many respects.

But Doug Ford? (Who, for non-Torontonians, is Rob Ford’s older brother and who took over Rob’s seat on city council when Rob ran for Mayor.) Holy crap, fuck Doug Ford. He has, with this scandal, proven himself to be a truly worthless human being, on the basis of one sentence:

“Rob is telling me these stories are untrue, that these accusations are ridiculous and I believe him.”

Not “Rob doesn’t smoke crack.” Not “Rob would never do those things.” Not “there’s no tape, this is just crap.” Not even a “oh, fuck you.” Doug Ford just threw his own brother under the bus, because according to Doug Ford, Doug Ford is just an innocent bystander in all of this. If the Rob Ford crack video eventually does emerge (and it looks at this point fairly likely to do so) and Rob Ford is indeed smoking crack and calling Justin Trudeau a fag and all the rest of it, well, that’s not Doug’s fault, because Rob told him he doesn’t smoke crack and why wouldn’t you believe your brother?

I get that Doug Ford is in a difficult situation: when you are a politician, you can be loyal to the public or to your family in a situation like this. If Doug knows there is no video or doesn’t know if the video exists, his response should have been a simple “Rob doesn’t smoke crack.” If he does know about the video, then he has two choices: either stand with the city and say that Rob needs to stand down, or double down, stand by his brother and say “Rob doesn’t smoke crack.” And frankly, given that last option, I think most people would (eventually) forgive him, because this is the man’s brother. I’ve had judges tell me on numerous occasions that they discount testimony from family members of parties/accuseds because, well, they’re family and it’s to be expected that family sticks together. And they’re not going to go attacking those people for perjury. We’re supposed to be loyal to our families.

But, when the chips were down, Doug Ford made his choice: not to be loyal to the city or to his own brother, but instead to be loyal to Doug Ford. That is the amoral and craven act of a truly worthless human being – and one, frankly, that if Rob and Doug’s roles in this were reversed I think Rob Ford would not have chosen – and I think people need to remember this, because Doug Ford is going to do his damnedest not to go away and continue to be a blight on the political landscape. And conservatives in Ontario need to remember it more than liberals, because it is now quite obvious that Doug Ford does not give a shit about his fellow conservatives. If Doug Ford isn’t willing to go to the mattresses for his brother, then he’s certainly not going to do it for his fellow party members.

Torontoist asked me to discuss how Canadian libel law would work if Rob Ford wanted to sue the press over the “crack-smoking story” so that is what I did there.

Now here is that GIF of Ford trying to throw a football again!

Allan Gregg is confused:

If negative advertising is so effective, maybe the media and politicians should ask themselves why other big advertisers (who are far more experienced and savvy) do not employ these same tactics. Just like the electoral process, it is safe to assume that McDonald’s wants to take market share from Burger King. They also know that the quickest and most immediate way of doing this would be to launch an ad campaign that claimed their competitor’s product contained botulism. Burger King could neutralize McDonald’s advantage by countering that Big Macs are rife with e-coli. This attack and counterattack might “work” to the extent that it would affect market share but it is not employed by McDonald’s and Burger King because they know it will destroy the category and pretty soon no one would ever buy a hamburger again. In other words, they are smart enough to know that the business they are in is not just about taking market share from the other guy … it’s about making consumers believe in eating hamburgers.

So while focusing on your opponent’s weakness rather than your own virtues might lead to a short term electoral advantage, over time, it will create a cascade of political cynicism. If you say “politician A is a crook” often enough, it is only a matter of time before the public comes to believe that all politicians are crooks. That is what is happening now and these are the seeds that defenders of negative advertising are sewing.

But Allan “oh, by the way, it was me who pushed for the infamous let’s-make-fun-of-Jean-Chretien’s-palsy advertisements in the 1993 campaign which bombed horribly” Gregg is completely skipping past the point, which is that creating political cynicism is not a cost of negative advertising; it is a benefit, because reducing the amount of politically engaged citizens makes elections easier to predict and manipulate. McDonald’s doesn’t do vicious negative advertising because if they taint the process of eating a hamburger they lose money; the Tories do negative advertising because if they taint the electoral process they effectively save money, to say nothing of making it easier to gain or maintain power.

This is really staggeringly obvious.

Mike From Nowhere asks: I have my ballot for the Liberal Party election and I’m still making up my mind. Thoughts on the candidates?

And Mitchell Hundred asks: Justin Trudeau is going to become the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (let’s be realistic here). Is this a good thing?

Well, yes and no.

Yes, because Trudeau is a smart, capable politician who nonetheless comes across as human – which many politicians do not. His “gaffe” about saying that Quebecers are better at running Canada than Albertans isn’t a big deal to anybody normal because Quebecers agree, Albertans weren’t going to vote Liberal anyway and everybody else doesn’t really care, but it reminded everybody that Trudeau is a for-real guy who occasionally says something a bit ill-advised, but everybody does that. All it did was remind people of his father (who was a famous mouth and which is a net plus for Justin). But getting back to the main point, Trudeau knows what he’s doing and will re-invigorate the Liberal party. His support for fossil fuel extraction is probably just cynical campaign noise so that he can be competitive in the west more than anything else.

No, because Trudeau has ruled out cooperation with the NDP, which (although this may only be a campaign tactic and he may change his mind once he is in power) means Trudeau has refused to deal with the central problem in Canadian politics, which is that the electoral national landscape is composed of one right-wing conservative party and three centre-left parties, which is why the fucking Tories keep winning fucking elections even though they will most likely never again get a majority of the popular vote. Until Canada’s other parties decide to engage with this fact they’re going to continue to be at a disadvantage, and it probably does not matter how smart and capable Trudeau is because if he never gets in power then who cares. Stephane Dion was ten times smarter and more capable than Trudeau is (seriously, Dion is like a friggin’ wizard) and he never got to be PM either.

For that reason and that reason alone, I would recommend voting for Joyce Murray over Trudeau, since Murray has openly campaigned for inter-party cooperation with the NDP and Greens and because she actually stands a (very small) chance at beating him. I don’t think she will, but if it takes Trudeau more than one or two ballots to win, hopefully he realizes the demand for actual, you know, victory for the left in Canada and changes his position.

People were asking for my opinion on the Rob Ford appeal decision and well, there it is for you.

And my Villain for Torontoist this year is the same as it is every year. There is a longstanding theory that people learn from experience, but Rob Ford seems dedicated to demonstrating that this theory does not have to be universal.

Torontoist does its yearly Heroes and Villains at the end of every year, and my hero was the Toronto Marlies, for their equality pledge.

(My Villain is still forthcoming. Regulars can, uh, probably guess.)

Torontoist thought it would be a good idea to go nutpicking in the wake of the Rob Ford ouster, so I did.

My weekly TV review is up at Torontoist.

Also, Torontoist asked me to do a legal review of the decision which got Rob Ford kicked out of office, so you can read that too.

Dear Mayor Rob Ford:

Recently, Sue Edworthy wrote a thoughtful and friendly letter to you. It was a thoroughly positive letter, given that it was written in response to you skipping out on an executive meeting of city council so that you could go coach football. Ms. Edworthy has, very nicely I might add, suggested that perhaps you would be happier if you made your foundation which helps underprivileged kids play football your life’s work, which dovetails neatly with the conflict of interest charges you face for using city resources to solicit donations to said foundation.

She’s right. But her letter to you is a classic “mom letter.” And this is the thing: you do not deserve positive reinforcement for its own sake at this stage in your life. You are a grown-ass man, in years if nothing else. God knows that, as the privileged son of a wealthy family, growing up and acting like an adult has always been something you treated as sort of an optional extra. And I’m certain that the useless son of a rich and connected family will find no shortage of donors for his nonprofit, because you were lucky enough to be born into a class that can almost always find something for its less talented children to do, and at least you’re good at coaching football (by all accounts).

But you aren’t a football coach first and foremost, no matter how much you might like coaching football (and I’m sure it is rewarding). You are the fucking Mayor of fucking Toronto. You ran a long and dirty campaign to become Mayor. You spent an extremely large amount of money to become Mayor – most of which, needless to say, was other people’s money. Every one of those people should take it as a personal insult when you blow off work – and that is exactly what you were doing.

I’m sure you don’t like being Mayor of Toronto any more. I’m quite sure you didn’t realize what you were getting into when you decided to run for Mayor; I’m sure you didn’t understand what the position entails and in fact am still sure you don’t (I strongly suspect you think the entire job consists of taking constituent phonecalls, like you’re some really, really well-paid customer service representative). Tough. I don’t care. You’re the Mayor. Do your fucking job. Don’t like it? Well, then, maybe you should quit. Ms. Edworthy was quite right about that: if you don’t want to do the job, you could at least have the courtesy to hand it over to someone who won’t half-ass it the way you’re half-assing it. That’s the choice most everybody else has every day: do your job or quit. Most of us just do our jobs even when it’s on a day we don’t want to be doing them, and for those of us where it becomes unbearable, we quit (and generally we don’t have the assurance that you do that someone will come along to make sure there’s something for you to do).

But if you’re going to remain Mayor (assuming you don’t get booted for that conflict of interest violation – and I note that 55 percent of Torontonians have said they would be happy to see you get the boot on a technicality, so please understand you would not win an emergency election), and it certainly seems like you want to keep being Mayor even if you don’t like doing the actual job – then you have to do the work. This might seem like a dreadfully obvious thing to say, but apparently you need it said to you, because you are an enormous bawling child of a man. Do the job or go home. You’re already quite probably the least effective Mayor in the city’s history (and given that we had Mel Lastman in charge less than a decade ago that really says a lot); leaving early won’t tarnish your reputation further because there is simply nothing left to tarnish.

Christian: Let’s assume DC’s movie efforts and Justice League series continues to hit snag after snag (likely), and by some cosmic twisting of events it all gets dropped in your lap. You’re given the mandate to reboot their efforts marvel style, but with one catch. Their needs to be a villain behind all of the plots in the various movies, but not one of the biggies everyone knows (no Lex Luthor or Brainiac for you). You’re mandated to take some low-level DC villain, and realistically ramp him up to being a threat for the big team. Who is your guy in that scenario?

I already cast my vote for Starro last week. If I need a second choice: Per Degaton. (Who, incidentally, was someone I always wanted to go up against the Legion of Super-Heroes, but never mind that.) Degaton easily translates to movies because he’s just a normal dude who happens to be a time-traveling tyrant, which gives you a lot of license to do awesome stuff and gives him an excuse to be anywhere doing anything, because of causality requiring him to be there at that point.

Also, the costume redesign he got in Johns’ JSA is really cool and would translate to real-life costuming very well.

Andrew Miller: If you could make one improvement to transit in Toronto, what would it be?

A downtown relief subway line in the east. The greatest operational stress point for the TTC is its heavy use along the Yonge line – another north-south line intersecting with the Sheppard line, Bloor/Danforth line and terminating at, say, Union would vastly expand TTC subwya coverage with only a few new stations and make the Yonge line far more rideable.

After that, in order: light rail transit along Finch, extending the Sheppard line to Downsview, light rail along Eglinton.

Pantsless Pete: Captain Marvel was a better character and comic than Superman and if not for his destruction via lawsuit his dominant market postion would have meant we ended with better comics today: Discuss.

I like Captain Marvel (not “Shazam,” – Jeebus, DC, what the hell is wrong with you). But a better character than Superman? The dude is a G-rated Superman clone, no ifs ands or buts about it; yes, he makes the child’s power fantasy more explicit, I suppose, and certainly Superman does not have a talking tiger buddy (memo to DC: have Superman be friends with a talking animal of some kind. Or, alternately, Rex the Wonder Dog), but this is all icing on the cake rather than the actual cake, and Superman is the real deal. Really, this isn’t even a contest.

Rbx5: Which, if any, of the upcoming post-AvX Marvel books/creative teams are you anticipating?

I honestly don’t even bother with previews any more, really. I don’t have the energy, so everything comes as a large surprise unless it is too gigantic to avoid the hype (like AvX) or somebody mentions it to me in email or sends me a link to a ComicsAlliance article (like Hawkeye – which was fine, but Abhay Khosla nailed it when he pointed out the giant stylistic debt owed to Batman: Year One on that comic).

Really, it makes comics a little more enjoyable: everything is a pleasant surprise, because these days I expect things to be mediocre rather than good.

PaulW: Hogan’s Heroes but played straight.

The BBC already did this thirty-five years ago with Colditz. It’s certainly aged a fair amount, but it’s not bad.

Jack Pumpkinhead: How do you feel about Final Fantasy games? Ever played any, favorite game, etc?

I played FF Tactics, and then 7 through, and half of 8, and then I more or less quit. I’m mostly a PC gamer, and the Final Fantasy games are console games, and once I stopped consoling (which was about the time my original Playstation started gathering dust) Final Fantasy and I walked our separate paths, especially after fans of the series started getting weird about whatsername in 7. FFT is still one of my favorite games of all time, though, and I’d love to see/know about a decent PC port/homage of that game.

Also, there were not enough hats in it. Good games have hats.

Things have been a little light here this week because Torontoist asked me to review the latest report into the events at the G20 Summit here in Toronto back in 2010, and it took me a while to plow through it. But if you want my take on this one, it is here.

So the media are abuzz about new poll showing the NDP screeching ahead of the Tories in the hypothetical “if an election were held today” scenario, with the NDP in this fantasy scenario forming a minority federal government for the first time in the polling history of Canada. The NDP, polling-wise, now essentially own the Atlantic and Quebec, are dominant in BC and statistically tied with the Tories in Ontario and Saskatchewan.

To which I say: this should not be surprising. I mean, granted, we’re talking about the Canadian media here, who traditionally recoil from the idea of NDP governance like vampires do from garlic. But this was more or less inevitable given the combination of the fact that the Tories won with a little over forty percent of the vote (hitting what was arguably their ceiling) and the fact that, now that the Tories no longer have the excuse of minority governments to explain away their mediocre-to-shitty ability to govern, their general mendacity is starting to become quite obvious.

Let me put it this way: the average Canadian doesn’t really care that much about political foofaraw and they often don’t care about policy – except that they do care about those policies that directly impact them, and more pointedly they tend to care about those policies which they have personally experienced previously in their lives.1 This latter makes kind of a difference, because when the Tories proposed their plans to reform EI to basically make it more punitive on its users and Jim Flaherty said that there was no such thing as a bad job, that was stupid, because most people have either used EI to get by while they were in between jobs or know a friend who has, and the simple truth about employment insurance is that most people use it relatively responsibly and get themselves back on their feet, and the Tories making it more punitive is just a slap in the face to everybody who’s ever been on it. (There’s a real strong sentiment in this country that EI is perfectly fair and reasonable: you pay into it when you work, you get it when you lose your job.) The proposal to reform the Canada Pension Plan to revise the eligibility age upwards to 67 similarly hurt the Tories because, well, Canadians generally do expect the CPP to continue to exist (unlike Americans, who have basically bought into the “Social Security’s just not gonna be there for us” argument for the most part).

On top of that, the Tories then made two crucial errors, both of which made them seem comparable to U.S. Republicans. Bluntly: Canadians mostly hate Republicans. Although many Canadians may be fiscally conservative and be inclined to vote Tory accordingly, social conservatism is dying a long, slow and welcome death in this country – and even many Canadian social conservatives look at American social conservatives and blink. Therefore, the worst thing you can do in Canadian politics is seem like Republicans, and over the last decade Stephen Harper has masterfully downplayed the social-con aspect of the western Reform-a-Tories and put on a dumbshow of fiscal centrism, and it eventually worked well enough to get him his majority.

Unfortunately, the Tories then got themselves implicated in an election-tampering scandal. Granted, by American standards this is nothing: it’s a series of voter-suppression robocalls that look likely to trace back to Tory organizers. But Canadians enjoy making fun of broken American democracy,2, and even the slightest implication of stolen elections is enough to make Canadians say “well, let’s take this seriously and get to the bottom of this so it doesn’t happen again harumph harumph,” and then the Tories did the stupidest possible thing they could do: they started trying to get Elections Canada’s probe shut down in court. And when their first attempt didn’t work, they tried a second time, and now they have basically confirmed to the entire country that, yes, they fucked around with the election, and their forty percent support started getting woogy.

And then, while this was happening, the Auditor General came out and said that the Conservative government had wasted a shit-ton of money on the F-35 fighters they procured last year, to the tune of $25 billion. That is a lot of money. The NDP promptly made hay of it3 and Parliament began an inquiry into how this huge waste happened and who was responsible for it. Until this week, when the Tories moved to end the inquiry, and at this point we’re well into the “once is annoying, but twice is a pattern” stage for a lot of average Canadians who are only just starting to realize that the Tories pull this sort of thing all the time.

And the problem now is that every time the Tories do it, they’re reinforcing the narrative. When they fire scientists who disagree with their climate proposals, when they eliminate the watchdog agency they proposed – every story that can be simplified down to “the Tories don’t want you to know the truth” just reinforces those earlier stories. The average Canadian doesn’t care about government watchdogs that much, because that sort of thing operates on an abstract level to most people.4 But Canadians do care about not being Americans, and if you link these policy stories to the things they care about through common themes, the Tories will start taking a beating. Which is exactly what’s happening.

Of course, all of this is relatively meaningless because the Tories do have a majority government and therefore we’re not going to have an election for another four years…

…unless, of course. that Elections Canada probe concludes that misconduct was so severe that we need a do-over of last year’s election, in whole or in part. Which, I suspect, is the major reason the Tories keep trying to kill it.

1. Which often differentiates them from Americans, who can experience selective amnesia about such things. [↩]
2. Also: American beer. [↩]
3. Noting that the Conservatives had called Jack Layton’s plan to hire 1,000 new doctors across Canada every year for a decade financially unsound, and that plan would have cost maybe $1.5 billion tops. [↩]
4. Not to me, of course, but then again I’m a big policy nerd and atypical in that respect. [↩]

Torontoist asked me to review the OIRPD’s report on police overreaction during the G20 summit here in Toronto, so I did.