Toronto Mayor Rob Ford demonstrates his governance style

Toronto mayor Rob Ford is a dick. He rips out bike lanes. Violates municipal conflict of interest rules by participating in votes to censure him for unethical fundraising. Closed a library and threatened others Skips council meetings to coach high school football (to which he diverts city resources), then hijacks a city bus to drive his team around. Calls the cops in a panic when journalists come to his house to ask him questions, and boycotts the most-read paper in the country because of their investigative reporting on him, and freaks out they sent out a reporter to check on reports that he was thinking of annexing some public land near his home.

He's ill-spoken, absurd, and hateful. In short, he is a laughable bumblefuck.

For evidence, I present to you this animated GIF of Mayor Laughable Bumblefuck demonstrating his governance style to the world.

(Thanks to Dave Nickle for fact-checking my ass!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: christ what an asshole • gifs • harhar • politics • schadenfreude • toronto

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http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland

I think he caught sight of the gravy train.
- scatterfingers
  
  Maybe he’s actually full of gravy and that’s why it’s so hard for him not to fall over.
gumbowing

The man is truly a buffoon. It’s like a more boorish version of the late Chris Farley was elected mayor of TO.
- Halloween_Jack
  
  There’s a fair amount of evidence that Chris Farley was something of a minor comic genius, or could be, although his reputation suffered from some of the shitty movies that he made even as he succumbed to drugs and booze. Aside from the fact that he was elected mayor of the largest city in Canada, I’m not sure that Rob Ford is good at anything. [P.S. I'll agree that Ford comes off as a Farley character.]
  - ocker3
    
    Having never met Farley, I couldn’t say if the Mayor was like an Evil Farley, but certainly some of his characters seem like they’d pull this stuff, if any of David Spade’s characters were their chief of staff
    - secretagentmoof
      
      My favorite of the various epithets used for him: Mayor Harkonnen.
      - ocker3
        
        Nice!
scatterfingers

The low-density tracts of the city voted this high-density buffoon in. I think there’s something Freudian about that.
- John Fleming
  
  Don’t make fun of the man because he’s overweight. Make fun of him because he’s a hateful right-wing asshole.
  - scatterfingers
    
    Not “dense” as in fat. Fat is actually not very dense. Dense as in a less-than-sparkling intellect.
    - John Fleming
      
      I stand corrected, sir. I see a lot of weight-related criticism of Ford, which I dislike almost as much as I dislike the man himself. I apologize for assuming that you were doing it too.
      - scatterfingers
        
        No need to apologise! My comment was probably a bit too vague, and I can’t say I’ve never made fun of him for his weight by, say, implying he’s full of gravy. Which is fairly hypocritical considering that I am right now full of gravy myself.
      - IamInnocent
        
        He considers that the Universe rotates around him: he’s surely full of gravy-ty.
    - millie fink
      
      Thick as a brick.
      - scatterfingers
        
        His political manoeuvrings have had about as much grace as a brick.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=502032833 Jason Brown
    
    no don’t make fun of him because he is right wing – but the hateful asshole works and dont forget just plain stupid and ignorant
Jorpho

Canadian content!

woooooo
- http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland
  
  In other exciting Canadian news: it’s gettin cold, eh?
- http://profiles.google.com/joshuabardwell Joshua Bardwell
  
  ALL CONTENT ON THE INTERNET MUST REVOLVE AROUND NEW YORK CITY, THE GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD.
http://twitter.com/johnkiggins John Kiggins

I’m not a Ford supporter, but I feel like accuracy important in these things – he coaches high school football, not little league football.
http://twitter.com/shighfi Stephanie

He was also trying to annex a city park, not a neighbour.

He also got about 14 city managers involved in cleaning up the road in front of his family business.
Nadreck

He is indeed the worst mayor the city has ever had, (and there’s a big rouge’s gallery in competition) but your narrative of his ridiculousness is a bit off. He tried to get involved in the removal of the bus from rush hour service to haul the team around but he botched it. The team was getting involved in a fight with a Catholic High School team after a rained out game and the cops were called. The cops phoned the TTC under the theory that they didn’t want both teams hanging around in the rain for an hour or so until the bus that had originally chartered turned up. The first diverted bus got lost and then Ford phoned some TTC transit official that was out of the office and had nothing to do with operations anyway.

He didn’t boycotted the Toronto Star (they ridiculously and illegally don’t get city press releases) because of the fiasco in which a lone reporter was peering over the fence into his backyard, but simply because they oppose his administration. The reporter thing devolved into a he said/they said shouting match about what really happened because the Star didn’t have any witnesses. Ford got a lot of political mileage out of it.

His major problem is that he’s too mentally lazy to read the manuals on how to be mayor. He tried to cancel a billion dollar transit project that had been over 10 years in the making and cost the city millions in the resulting mess. It was something he had no legal right to do at all. He gets involved in infractions of conflict of interest rules and then admits that he hasn’t bothered to read the rules. He constantly tries to directly order city staff around which is something else he has no right to do under Ontario law.

Even the new batch of rookie councillors has given up on him as they understand the budget process better than he does even though he was a councillor for about 10 years before becoming mayor: 10 years in which he never made a single political ally. His election is a monument to people’s anti-intellectual worship of stupidity in this town.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515015318 Missy Pants
  
  Lets not forget that he tried to get a Streetcar driver in trouble when he got yelled for driving past the open streetcar doors and that the police said he’d done nothing wrong when photographed driving 70km/hour and reading, nothing wrong at all.
  
  I hate him so much, he’s so absurd, but he does give hope to all the other university drop outs around the world! If you can’t finish university you too can be mayor one day (so long as your filthy stinking rich).
  - scatterfingers
    
    I’m a university drop-out too. However I’m not mayor. I’m self-employed and doing quite well. I hope I didn’t give too much hope to anyone, though.
soap

I don’t know. It doesn’t look like he dropped the ball.
- wysinwyg
  
  No, but he did give up two yards or so without any pressure from the defense. If I were the city of Toronto I would bench him.
  - http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland
    
    I don’t think Schwarzenegger could bench that guy*.
    
    *As a gentleman of some girth, I can get away with a fat joke. Only a ginger can call another ginger “ginger”…
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Ginger chasers can’t use ‘ginger’?
      - http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland
        
        For non-ginger use, the proper term is “Trekkie”.
- johne2
  
  It says he’s a bumblefuck not a fumblefuck.
http://arib.livejournal.com Ari B.

Laughable Bumblefuck sounds like the name of a cover band.
- Rico_Featherbutt
  
  …one that excels in Etobicoke
winkybb

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/08/14/rob-ford-chicago321.html

He also drives whilst reading.
http://twitter.com/fishcado Fishcado

Doesn’t matter what he does since Canada doesn’t count.
- John Fleming
  
  We (Canada) are going to hold our collective breath until you take that back, meanie!
  - http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland
    
    We (Canada) will also stop exporting our feature films to the US market! Take that!
    - ocker3
      
      Threaten to withhold the next crop of Comedians, That will make them depressed and start crying
  - Rico_Featherbutt
    
    And a good banking model.
- Rico_Featherbutt
  
  Ya we don’t count until the Americans need us on the war front.
  - Rico_Featherbutt
    
    And great beer.
    - Rico_Featherbutt
      
      And International Relations
http://twitter.com/KevinCarson1 Kevin Carson

He’s a bigger assclown than James Trafficant, and that’s saying one whole fuck of a lot. Still not an assclown in Donald Trump’s league, though.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=122700220 Vanessa Smith

This version is better: http://i.imgur.com/n06T9.gif
rocketpjs

He has done a great job of being the cautionary example that will help ensure that Vancouver and the 21 municipalities in Greater Vancouver never amalgamate into one massive clusterfuck like Toronto did.
Paul Renault

Don’t hold back Cory, let us know how you really feel about him, eh.
http://www.oplopanax.ca Oplopanax

While I completely agree that the man is a dispicable ass who’s actions more that demonstrate his idiocy, I don’t find this unfortunate incident worthy of ridicule. A video of an overweight man falling down is cruel and unfortunate, and not a comment on his governing style. He deserves criticism for being a bully, a liar, and a idiot who willfully misunderstands “conflict of interest”, but not for tripping.
- curgoth
  
  The only reason this is fair game is that Ford has made such a big deal of his connection to football, skipping council sessions and court appearances for football. It’s fair game because he made it fair game by making it a politcal issue.
- http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland
  
  Charlie Chaplin would like to have a word with you.
Ryan Lenethen

Toronto, why are you so crazy? I mean you elected Mel Lastman for two terms! So as much as Ford is a “laughable bumblefuck” (nice description btw!), this isn’t exactly Toronto’s first dance at the prom.
ZA_SF

Look, Toronto can’t expect to continue to pull in those US TV show productions if it doesn’t look more like how NYC and Chicago *used to be.* Canada, remain the Disney-fied version Americans pay you to be. [/cheek]
katkins

Ah, the famous Fail Mary pass…
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000444450214 Genre Slur

What I love about the timing of this is that his city is I) holding the 100th Grey Cup, and II) the Toronto Argonauts are representing the East in the Grey Cup. If the city’s Mayor is any indication of the Boatmen’s ability to execute on Sunday, then Kevin Glenn and the rest of the Calgary Stampeders are gonna be easily hoofing back to town with Lord Earl’s booty.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_2X6OHAN7GLVLAIP4QLECKD3NY4 morgane

In a country i’ve heard about, Mayor Ford would be called “a republican”

just saying…
skeptacally

if you leave the ekkehard ehlers music from the “scattered crowd” piece playing while you scroll down to this post, bumblefuck’s tumble becomes soothingly hypnotic.
skeptacally

in other news, i’d love a .gif of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=znE1Hyj0WMY

bumblefuck was late for court yesterday — where he is facing a $6 million libel suit — so he double-parked and sprinted past the waiting reporters.

now, for you non-canuckistanians, this court date should not be confused with the hearing he faced for election fraud, or the court hearing for conflict of interest that could force him from office (ruling to come soon).

as for dashing past reporters on his way to court, bumble may not be nimble on the gridiron, but he’s made the blinding flash past reporters a most successful (and regularly executed) trademark. for a big man, he sure can motor into a courtroom.
skeptacally

finally (and sorry to be a comment-hog), i want to thank you, cory, for giving me a new name for ford. i live just far enough away from toronto (peterborough) to be able to enjoy his antics. part of me wants to believe that it is all very cleverly executed political performance art.
abelle26

Aaaaand he’s been ousted! Thank you, justice.