Lancing The Boil

"With today's announcement I know I embarrassed everyone in this city and I will be forever sorry. I know admitting my mistake was the right thing to do and I feel like 1,000 pounds have been lifted from my shoulders. ... Folks, I have nothing to hide."
"I think I know what's on the video and I know it's not pretty. Did I smoke something? Probably. It's ugly."
"Again, I sincerely, sincerely, sincerely apologize."

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford addresses a throng of media at city hall in Toronto on Tuesday, Nov.5, 2013. (The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette)

"The past is the past and we must move forward. To the residents of Toronto, I know I have let you down and I can't do anything else but apologize, and apologize. And I'm so sorry. I know, I know I have to regain your trust and your confidence. I love my job, I love my job, I love this city, I love saving taxpayers money and I love being your mayor. There is important work that we must advance and important decisions that must be made...I was elected to do a job and that's exactly what I am going to continue doing."
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

Such humility, such genuine remorse. It could melt a heart of stone. This is no buffoon speaking, this is a clever, street-wise survivor who is accustomed to having his cake and slurping the icing with delight at his appetite for sustenance whether it be in the form of an overabundance of food, titillating suspense through notoriety, or throwing his political weight (oops) around, counting on his supporters to surmount the plans of his detractors to remove him from his mayoral podium.

After all, the fellow has put Toronto the Good to rest and presented its residents and the awed international community with an entirely other version of the city, as Naughty Toronto; not bland and uninteresting, but alive with intrigue and dark alleyways of addiction and humiliation. That's feisty for you people who have grown so weary of staid and proper. Keeping covert company with the underclass of drug merchandising low-lifes, he's just one of the boys, and don't they love him.

Of course it goes without too much emphasis that Mayor Ford's indignant demand that Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair resign in disgrace should prevail. It is all, all of it, the fault of the police chief for his revelations of video retrieval from the hard drive of one of the buddies in the incriminating crack cocaine video who survived, unlike the other who did not and may be looking down -- or up in his post-death status  -- cackling in derision at the mayor's revelations.

News hounds have outdone themselves in a feverish no-holds-barred explosion of assaulting the mayor's tender sensibilities, surrounding the privacy of his home and screeching their demands for more damning scoops with which to pillory the poor unfortunate man. For are we not all human, susceptible to our demons, be they art collecting, bingo-playing, video gaming, coffee-house, drug or alcohol addictions. Some people obsess over sports, Mayor Ford's obsession is limelighting.

And he has limelighted himself out of a job, while limelighting the City of Toronto all over splashily jealous international news media; the BBC daily updates the situation; the American news-and-jokes circuit finally acknowledges that Canada exists, if only within the City of Toronto. He has catapulted the city and its reputation into orbit. It's hard for a lot of people to decide whether to scorn or to praise him.

But then, Ontarians are like that. They could never decide whether to entirely scorn or praise their former premier. Dalton McGuinty escorted the OPP into a position of upholding violence when it was exercised by "Native Warriors" in Caledonia, and in the process helping armed Mohawks and other warriors including gun and drug-runners from across North America to intimidate, threaten and do violence against ordinary non-native citizens attempting to live in peace in their little subdivision.

Premier McGuinty's stern upbringing in Christian righteousness taught him right from wrong, and to make all the right choices and never regret them. So he has never regretted the Ornge scandal, the eHealth debacle or the choice to cancel gas plants in places where the residents had no wish for them to be built, to enable him to endear himself to the populace and win another election. He did the 'right thing', he claimed repeatedly and has no regrets.

The billions upon billions of taxpayer money that trickled through his corrupt and inept fingers cost the province dearly. And the taxpayers will continue picking up that tab. But Premier McGuinty was an honourable man who would never dream of appearing skunk-drunk or stoned out of his mind at public gatherings, heavens, no. Mayor Ford, on the other hand; no class, none whatever, acting the clown while "saving money for the taxpayer".

What ineluctable choices.