Found On Road Dead

Poor Rob Ford.
The soon to be ex-mayor of Canada's largest city has discovered to his chagrin that laws apply to him.

Well, actually, he hasn't. He's framing his conviction on conflict of interest charges and consequent removal from office as an "orchestrated attempt by the Left" to get rid of him. A successful attempt, it turns out, and only because Ford himself provided all the necessary ammunition.

The facts of the case were never at issue. I mean, Ford's vote regarding his own football charity is on record. And he flat out admitted he'd never read the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act which he ran afoul of...the very Act that governs his job. I don't know about you, but if I'm ever elected to office, I'll be an expert on conflict of interest matters within a day or two, and avoid anything that even looks like a conflict.
Not Ford, though. He seems to relish conflict. He has an amazing ability to say and do exactly the wrong thing at any given moment, and to do it with a belligerent sneer on his face. He is a boor, a buffoon, a walking embarrassment to the city of Toronto, and all you need to know about Rob Ford can be summarized in his reaction to the ruling that just turfed him from office:

"This comes down to left-wing politics. The left wing wants me out of here and they'll doing anything in their power to," he said.

Actually, Rob, I gotta say, you've done so much to help that left wing achieve their goal that I can't help wondering if you have some kind of death wish. You've been caught swearing at a 911 dispatcher (and you waxed positively Clintonian there, denying you swore but allowing as how you may have used "the f-word" to express your frustration); you've gone out of your way to snub your city's gayfolk (and who'd be surprised at that, given that he thought AIDS was a gay disease?) Not a day goes by when Ford doesn't say something that causes you to raise your eyebrows, or roll your eyes around in your head, or smash your head against your desk...

He ignores every attempt to get him to play by the rules. It really makes me wonder how he coaches football. Isn't that a scary thought?

I've Rob Ford, so help me. Even now there's part of me who wishes I could still like the guy: for all his bluster and bitterness, there's a nice guy in there somewhere. I liked that Ford was a kind of anti-politician, a guy who would brook no bullshit...there's a part of me that responds to that populism and always has. When Ford was a councillor, he never spent more than a minuscule fraction of his office budget--there were a couple of years, as I recall, when he spent exactly nothing. That I liked, that I respected. I thought he'd bring that kind of fiscal sanity to a city dearly in need of it. Instead he was the proverbial bull in a china shop. And now the bull's in the shit.

Serves him right.