Rob Ford is out of control and a real danger to himself
The pathology of Rob Ford is bred in the bone.
I understand this better now.
It’s in his genes. It courses through his veins. It is both nature and nurture.
He is, I truly fear, doomed — not as mayor, which hardly seems to matter anymore, but as a human being, the product of a profoundly myopic and maladroit family.
They are The Dysfunctionals.
Undoubtedly, it takes guts to invite a TV journalist into one’s home amidst the maelstrom raging around a beloved son, a brother.
Two Ford women did that late Thursday — matriarch Diane, sister Kathy — sitting across from CP24 anchor Stephen LeDrew, summoned for the exclusive as new footage of a berserk mayor went viral.
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They don’t want him to resign. They scarcely want him to get the help he so obviously needs.
“He has a problem,” Mrs. Ford acknowledged. “He has a weight problem. He has a huge weight problem and he knows that.
“I think that is the first thing he has to attack, because this will change his whole demeanour.”
Forgive me for repeating myself: Jesus wept.
“Robbie is not a drug addict,” Kathy declared. “I know because I’m a former addict.”
Neither woman would even grant what Ford has admitted — that he’s a drunk, at least in episodic binges.
“It depends what you want to consider an alcoholic,” Kathy suggested. “When he drinks, he just goes full-tilt.”
Can there be any misinterpreting of this family’s skewed dynamics?
There is strong support: Go Rob. There is a pitiful lack of comprehension. And there is no wisdom.
“It’s not acceptable behavior,” Mrs. Ford conceded. “He is the mayor of the city. He knows that better than anyone. To err is human but to forgive is divine.
“We all err. Here, there is no forgiveness.”
In what passes for a family intervention last week, Mother Ford told her wayward son what she expected of him: Get a driver, get an alcohol detector for the car, do something about the weight, and “yes, see a counselor”.
But “not away in some rehab . . . ”
And definitely do it whilst staying in the job.
What hope is there for Ford when his own mother cannot or will not speak sobering truths, cannot or will not pull a drowning son towards the shallows?
There is no, sadly, no salvation for Ford from his intimates, not even — anymore — within his tightest inner circle of confidantes.
Quite apart from enabling siblings and a mother who has misjudged the severity of her son’s compulsions, there is also inside the compound walls a fink, or someone who’s had enough, or a conspirator who’s sold out the mayor for far less than 30 pieces of silver.
Rob raw: Incensed, inflamed, maddened.
Scary stuff.
We’ve seen Ford drunk. That man in screeching hysterics — caught on a tape obtained and released by the Star — does not, to me, look drunk.
On drugs maybe, except most illegal narcotics do not cause this kind of combustible fit, except possibly the paranoia induced by chronic cocaine use.
I suspect this is pure, unguarded, unfiltered Ford.
The alleged drinking problem, his self-proclaimed “drunken stupors” and convenient resultant blackouts, has now become Ford’s absolving excuse for crude, irrational behavior. It’s his version of pleading the fifth — a fifth of vodka.
“I was very, very inebriated,” the mayor claimed, emerging from his office minutes after the Star posted the latest video.
Wouldn’t say who he was talking to or who he was talking about in that outburst, hitching up his trousers, rolling up his sleeves: “I’m gonna kill that f---ing guy, I’m telling you. It’s first-degree murder.”
In the tape’s wake, a pathetic stab at damage control.
“All I can say is, again, I’ve made mistakes. All I can do is reassure the people that uh . . . I don’t know what to say.”
Ford should, at the very least, recognize if the footage was shot — surreptitiously, it seems — in his own house, a home shared with a spouse and two young children who would surely be terrified if they were present for such an expletive-laced, violence-threatening tirade.
“It’s extremely embarrassing,” said Ford. “The whole world’s going to see it. You know what? I don’t have a problem with that, but it’s extremely embarrassing. I don’t know what to say. Again, again and again, I’m apologizing.”
This has to stop. It is grotesque to watch.
The shocking part is that it’s not even shocking anymore. No less surprising than Ford’s clear intention to dig in his heels — buttressed by The Fords — while his personal life implodes.
Like Ford, I do not embrace the hug-a-thug philosophy. But somebody needs to wrestle this mayor to the ground. Left to his own oblivious devices, this guy is flirting with self-destruction, and not in a metaphorical sense. The weight, the booze, the drugs, the veins popping in his temples: He’s going to drop dead.
Those who love him are, in fact, killing him.
Our mayor requires more than just a little time off to detox and get a grip. Too many of us put naive faith in the redemptive properties of rehab but the process is notoriously unreliable and more often than not ineffective, especially once the patient leaves a controlled environment. It inevitably takes repeated stints before an individual can put a whole lot of gone between the drugs and the alcohol and his own addictive vulnerability.
Ford can remain mayor, the job he professes to love, reeling from one crisis to another, or he can put his health first, which obviously means defying The Fords, too.
Unfortunately, for all that has happened, Ford seems not yet to have hit rock bottom. What more — a cocaine-induced heart attack?
To hell with the procedural restrictions that exist for the removal of a mayor. To hell with Ford Nation proclaiming that only the electorate can decide Ford’s fate. This is a human being in agony. As a matter of medical urgency, Premier Kathleen Wynne must step in and be mom. Even phlegmatic Councilor Denzil Minnan-Wong, a solid Ford ally throughout this frenzy, has reached the end of his rope: “If he can’t find the exit, I think we need to show him the door.”
I’ve had little sympathy for the woes the mayor has brought upon his own head. But I can no longer bear to watch what is unfolding. He is, so sadly, alone.
Grotesque to watch, yes, but not, I firmly argue, shameful to show.
Do not allow the media Cassandras, the scolds of journalism, to steer this latest episode into a sidebar on the purported barbarism of our business.
The Star did indeed pay for the video, which is not the second tape to which Police Chief Bill Blair alluded last week when he confirmed the existence of the “crack” video.
Ford is not just any schlemiel, smoking crack or toddling wasted along the Danforth, or indulging in a deranged screed possibly inside the privacy of his home. He’s the mayor of the fourth-largest city on the continent, and for many people now the world over the face of Toronto. The alleged ignominy doesn’t bother me. Toronto will recover just fine from Hurricane Rob. Only if he stands for office again — and wins, which might very well happen — can we be blamed for the Folly of Ford II.
But citizens of this city need to know, need to see, need to hear the full mania of this man, and thus far it’s been mainly the Star doing that investigative digging, while Ford’s enablers and apologists — in and outside the media — excuse and exonerate.
This isn’t the pretend journalism of J-School, where ethics can be debated ad nauseum. It’s hardnosed newspapering that speaks truth to power, truth to deceit.
I argued the Star should have paid for the original crack video. I have zero conflict about buying this one.
Some pundits may shudder at checkbook journalism. I shudder at their shallow news judgment.
Most of all, I am grateful for a mother who would smack me across the face first and then drag my sorry ass to rehab.
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