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news

Rob Ford Takes on the Toronto Star

By David Topping

Painting the candidate as the victim of “baseless attacks” and “outright lies,” and calling the paper one with “clear biases and [a] transparent agenda” that is “openly working against the democractic process,” the latest email message from Rob Ford’s campaign to supporters (included below) pulls no punches: the Toronto Star is the enemy.

The paper and the candidate haven’t been collegial in recent memory, but things got much tenser after the Star published a piece in July suggesting that Ford might have “shook” and “slapped” a high school student in 2001 on the football team that he coached.
Ford himself didn’t respond immediately, but his campaign called that story “outrageous,” “slanderous,” and “patently incorrect.” While the Star‘s original article incorporated accounts from others who called the allegation into question, the Globe went further, finding the football player himself, who called the Star‘s story “completely untrue.”
(A note at the head of the Star‘s original article now reads: “This material subject to legal complaint by Rob Ford.”)
That wasn’t the end of it. When Ford’s Wikipedia page was edited to include a link to parody site RobFordMayor.com—a site that Ford’s lawyers quickly saw to the disposal of; it’s back now—the campaign became convinced that the edits were made from the Toronto Star‘s offices. (More likely, they came from another Torstar property, like Metro or Eye Weekly.)
And that was all enough for the Ford team to publicly announce in August that they would stop returning calls from the Star.
A Star editorial published on Thursday, which asks Joe Pantalone, Rocco Rossi, and Sarah Thomson to drop out of the race, must have been the final straw, though. “If [those candidates] refuse to end their ego-fuelled campaigns, which is most probable,” wrote Bob Hepburn, “then these also-ran candidates would be partly to blame for helping Ford become mayor if he beats Smitherman.”
We’re waiting for comment from the Star, and will update back when we get it. We haven’t tried to reach Ford’s team, though—they don’t return our calls either.

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Comments

  • http://undefined brodie

    Considering Ford’s very apparent connections with Sue-Ann Levy and her generous support of his campaign in the Sun, isn’t this release a tad hypocritical?

  • http://undefined EricSmith

    When a newspaper is anti-Ford, that is clearly bad. When a newspaper is pro-Ford, that is obviously good. Why can’t Communists understand that? Anti-Ford bias, that’s why!

  • rek

    I just noticed the reddish, white-like, blueness of his campaign colours.

  • http://undefined Danielle

    financial contributation?

  • http://undefined Enigma

    Torontoist could have played an interesting informative role in this election. Instead, you decided for an editorial position somewhere below campus humor. It’s no surprise Ford won’t return your calls.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Oh my god.

  • http://undefined Jim Beam

    Face it folks, the horse is out of the barn. Rob Ford is well on his way to becoming Mayor. Toronto Star and its slanderous editorials will not work. Strategic voting will not work. Ford is leading the race in every part of town, across virtually all demographics. Slitherman, Saucy Rossi, Pantaloonie and Skeletor Thomson have no chance of winning. It’s time to let go of the hatred and deal with the fact that the people of this City have spoken – they want Rob Ford as Mayor. It’s time we all just accept this as fact and move on.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Actually, the people of this city haven’t spoken. That happens in a month.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    No. Ford is just gifted at burning bridges.

  • http://paul.kishimoto.name Paul Kishimoto

    Insulting nicknames → troll → don’t respond.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    And for him to issue reactive press statements and launch libel suits and throw temper tantrums instead of sucking it up and taking the high road, it’s becoming clearer that he needs to grow a backbone.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Just making a point of fact.
    (I know he’s gnarly and green and won’t let me cross his bridge. So I won’t try.)

  • http://undefined Jim Beam

    Typical Leftie…can’t handle the truth so you pretend you don’t hear it. Pathetic….

  • http://undefined Jim Beam

    Hmmm….seems to me that your are a bit of a reactionary yourself. Does this ring a bell?
    “I know he’s gnarly and green and won’t let me cross his bridge. So I won’t try.”

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    No, it doesn’t ring a bell.

  • http://undefined EricSmith

    STOP FEEDING. Your denial that you are doing so is taken as read.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Awwwwwh. :(
    But he’s corpulent! Can’t I, please?

  • rmcw

    I’ve heard that Rob Ford’s city hall will listen to the citizens. If you leave a message, you will get a personal phone call back.
    Although, based on this article and basic pattern recognition, that will probably only happen if you don’t disagree with anything Ford puts forward. I’ll give it to Ford that despite his many faults, he sounds like a great politician if you need a particular service from city hall and have trouble getting access, and he does a good job serving his constituents directly. But as long as he continues responding to detractors in this manner, I wonder what may happen when he has to start dealing with people who need something from city hall that doesn’t square with his beliefs.
    In fairness, the Star hasn’t appropriately been scrutinizing the rest of the candidates, but as many others have put before me, he needs to realise that as a frontrunner and (shudder) mayor, he will be observed and criticised more heavily than others.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    This does bring up a basic question: Ford is preoccupied with cutting out the “gravy train” by halving the number of council seats, slashing council budgets for constituent services, and “trimming the waste” (perhaps in lieu of trimming his own waist).
    But if he as a mayor promises to “listen to the citizens” — which means to have a customer service-based approach to respond to constituents — who is he going to hire to helm those 311 phones, social media portals, and service wickets? How will he do it without spending? It means he’s either going to hire an army of unpaid interns (indentured) or else he will have to spend money on a payroll to make his city hall operate like a Best Buy or Wal-Mart outlet.
    Either way, spending money for personnel will contradict his claim to cutting costs by removing people. He’ll still need people to run his city hall. He cannot expect to do it all by himself.

  • rmcw

    Likewise for slashing the size of council. You can cut the number of councillors in half, but you still have the same amount of work to do. His plan will likely reduce the level of representation, since there won’t be the office budget to hire the assistants needed to give councillors the extra support to maintain that level (that, and I’m fairly certain the number of wards in the city falls under provincial jurisdiction, although someone may correct me if I’m wrong). Only so much of that slack can be picked up by volunteer community organisations, and one returns to the issue, then, as to what happens if those organisations don’t agree with the policies of the mayors office.
    (On a side note, not-so-subtle digs at Ford’s weight don’t do much for those arguing against him. Yes, I would like to see Ford lose weight for the same reason that I don’t want anyone to deal with the potential long-term health issue that are associated. Despite his faults, he’s still a human being. And realistically, obesity should have no bearing on how well someone could do this job more than any other physical barrier. So let’s drop the issue and focus on the more obvious problems.)

  • http://undefined andrews

    Why is the Fordite response to anyone that doesn’t like Rob Ford always something like
    “Typical Leftie. Doesn’t get it. Rob Ford is supercool and you lose because he’s so cool. Out of touch. Champagne Socialist”
    or some other variation on that theme? It really speaks of the sort of person that supports Rob Ford.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    I’m overweight.
    Whatever reference made to Ford’s weight is less about, well, weight itself, and more about his obsession with “trimming waste” and accusing the current government of a putative “gravy train” extravagance. He himself demonstrates not only a corpulence, but also a morbid obesity which (to me) informs his obsessive drive to “trim the city’s fat/waste” as a surrogate for trimming himself. As cities go, Toronto pales to other rival cities (we largely have the province to thank for that). Maybe he should instead try Montréal, one of the most corrupt cities on the continent, for cutting waste. It could certainly use it.
    Whether my observation is with any merit or not isn’t the point. It’s the perception that matters. Were he a woman, weight is all Torontonians would be talking about. As a point of interest: it’s small wonder that very few obese women have ever made it to positions of executive leadership, but we’re still okay with playing down a man’s obesity in relation to the executive decisions he makes for the public.
    Ford’s message produces a cognitive dissonance for evaluating what he says versus what he’s actually done (namely, to himself). While metabolism and weight gain are not problems in of themselves and often beyond one’s complete control at all times, refusing to take care of your body reveals itself through other ways (wrinkly leather skin by 35 after spending most of it in the sun is another example).
    In other words, one can be big and not unhealthy. Plenty of people are big and healthy. I’m big and healthy. I ride a bike. Then I look at Rob: I see unhealthiness and an impending cardiac from job stresses (of which the mayoralty will have many). Then I wonder whether he too will make this city unhealthy — starting with tacking down on active transportation modes like bicycling and, from there, who knows what.
    In that sense, his obsessive repetition for cutting out city waste is alarming on a much deeper level for our city.

  • http://undefined rich1299

    An excellent article in the Globe and Mail on Ford’s “troubles” with the truth
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/marcus-gee/can-we-trust-rob-ford-a-guy-who-gets-his-numbers-wrong/article1719778/
    and there’s a lot more that could be added to that article but I suppose the writer had to keep it within a certain length.

  • rmcw

    Sadly, a woman doesn’t even need to be obese to have weight used against her; see reference to “Skeletor Thomson” in an earlier comment in this thread. I agree with you 100% on all counts – but I still think the important thing here is that the weight in this case is the symptom of the character, and without backup (as you have so eloquently provided), mentioning it just provides food for the trolls. Just sayin’ :)

  • http://undefined AR

    Your childish nicknames of the candidates you don’t support are pathetic. It seems most prevalent on the Ford side.

  • http://undefined Andrew

    By which I assume you mean, the same colors as the Toronto city flag. Or do you mean something else?

  • rek

    No, more like the colours of the Russian Confederation flag. Rob Ford is a Commie plant!

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Wouldn’t that make him a corrupt crony of a post-Communist government?