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CHARLATAN AT THE GATES



                                                                           Bill Lee

                                                                      May 11, 2018

The writ has recently been dropped for the Ontario election of 2018. Soon we will be trudging to the polls (in June). A couple of days ago we the had the "pleasure" of the first Leaders debate which included the Liberal Party's Kathleen Wynne, the Progressive Conservative's Doug Ford and Andrea Horvath of the New Democratic Party, Monday evening, May the 7th.. By and large Ford seemed to get through the debate and it seems that while he didn't give much information as to his policies, he did not demonstrate any of thuggish or bullying behaviour for which has become known.

Subsequently however, indeed the next day, The Toronto Star broke a story, which was soon picked up by most other media, that Doug Ford’s campaign had had to admit that actors, complete with white "Ford" t-shirts especially manufactured for the occasion, were hired to play P C supporters at a Con rally outside of the venue of said leaders debate in Toronto. This was of course to attempt to portray Ford and the party as deeply and wildly popular. Once they were caught a Ford spokesperson came out and decried this offense to the sacred democratic principles of the leader, Dougie and averred that this was perpetrated by a rogue PC candidate (unnamed) and absolutely without the knowledge of the leader and certainly against citizen Ford’s principles. She didn’t precisely cry that she was “shocked”, but did claim that this kind of thing will never happen again. Very reassuring. Or not. This was not the first bit of political slight of hand perpetrated by the campaign and by Mr. Ford personally. The fact is that Ford himself had been previously caught putting out videos pretending to give media interviews. Sadly, it turned out that the fearless interrogator turned out not to be a member of the fourth estate, but someone on the payroll of the Ford campaign team who lobbed softball questions at his own employer. In other words, unless Ford is so out of it that he is unable to recognize his own campaign officials, it was a clear bit of chicanery. Its purpose was obviously to pretend to contradict the well known fact that candidate Ford fears and loathes the media and any possibility that he might have to address a serious question. Of course Ford is at a big disadvantage when compared to his idol and role model, the orange child president south of the boarder. Unlike the 45th president of the USA, he is not blessed having his own media network, Fox, to obfuscate, lie and cheerlead for him. We assume that Doug took the bull by the horns and tried to create his own version of a fawning media media. Thus, in quick succession we are presented with these two pitiful pieces of sharp practice (i.e., cheering and lying actors and obsequies campaign minions pretending to be reporters) on the part of Dougie and his “team”.

None of this mendacity and sharp practice should surprise us of course. Ford is like the orange haired huckster to the south, a figure whom he has frequently lauded. So, we must be clear that Ford is, and as he always has been, a huckster, a flim-flam man, a charlatan, attempting to sell the people of Ontario his own special political snake oil - tax cuts for the rich, trickle down economics etc., etc.. He has previously demonstrated this persona in his role as chief enabler of his haplessly drug addicted and inarticulate younger brother Rob who had such an embarrassing time and destructive term as the Mayor of Toronto. In

that role Ford achieved practically nothing except to elicit guffaws of derision from real politicians and confirm the accepted opinion that he cared nothing (he had wanted to save the city money by closing libraries for example) and knew nothing of either policy or city politics. He carries this image with him into this election. This doesn’t mean that Doug Ford is not a mean spirited thug who will probably have a quite destructive neoliberal agenda, again like Trump. The point is that his is a purveyor of rank balderdash, that he rarely if ever deals in facts and sees the voters as rubes who can be fairly easily distracted by decrying the character of his Liberal opponent, proffering outright lies about his previous (and short) political experience on the Toronto City Counsel and blathering empty codswallop about “efficiencies” which he declines or is unable to name. The sad thing is that, if the present polling on the voting intentions of the "folks" (one of Ford's favourite words) of Ontario is accurate, the flim flam man seems to have sized things up pretty accurately. That unnamed "rogue candidate" might have saved his or her money on those actors and their t-shirts.

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