typezed
Active Member
It's a bit frustrating that when asked the secret of Rob Ford's success Doolittle points to Ford always returning phonecalls and responding to constituent concerns. She did it last night on The National and she answered the same on Anderson Cooper a couple months ago. It's probably a prominent explanation in her book. She's the reporter closest to the story, so she'd know much better than I, but I've always thought of these as way overstated claims similar to "best mayor ever" and "a billion dollars". Reporters could have tested this, finding ten people from different parts of the city and with different concerns and seeing which ones received responses. Wouldn't have been all of them, I'm sure. I have a friend who received a call from Ford's people about a concern he'd relayed about some small problem at a community centre near Jarvis. They wanted to bring several people and media to meet my friend, so he refused, asking whey they couldn't just fix the problem. This guy hates Ford, so I don't know why he didn't play along, but he didn't.
Attend the community council meeting for Toronto - East York and you'll see the councillours there personally assisting constituents with small concerns dealing with patios, hot dog stands, fences and decks. Probably more than Ford ever did. Why do I think Ford was successful? Divisiveness, wedge issues, unattainable promises, and his lies and mythmaking being constantly legitimized and spread by reporters who have never put the claims to the test.
On another front, I'd always given more credit to Ford Sr. than he probably deserved. I'd imagined that he'd worked himself up on the presses to build his printing business. Now I see that he was a salesman who entered into the business through his social connections.
Attend the community council meeting for Toronto - East York and you'll see the councillours there personally assisting constituents with small concerns dealing with patios, hot dog stands, fences and decks. Probably more than Ford ever did. Why do I think Ford was successful? Divisiveness, wedge issues, unattainable promises, and his lies and mythmaking being constantly legitimized and spread by reporters who have never put the claims to the test.
On another front, I'd always given more credit to Ford Sr. than he probably deserved. I'd imagined that he'd worked himself up on the presses to build his printing business. Now I see that he was a salesman who entered into the business through his social connections.
