Can’t Touch Him (or: Rob Ford is Still the Mayor of Toronto)

In honour of our Peter Griffin-esque mayor getting off scott-free,
here’s a video of Peter Griffin getting off scott-free.

The “Fordict” — the Twitter term for the verdict on the appeal of the judgement against Rob Ford, Toronto’s Peter Griffin-esque mayor — is out, and the court decision ordering His Worship (the technically correct honorific term for the Mayor of Toronto, even this guy) out of office has been overturned. There’s going to be a lot of gnashing of teeth over this at the Toronto Star and other local progressive circles, but speaking as one of Ford’s detractors, it’s a fair cop. The verdict against Ford was based on a particularly harsh interpretation of the law, and the mayor’s case for his appeal isn’t without merit. At the very least, the mayor has learned the true meaning of “conflict of interest”.

While we may be stuck with “Mayor Bumblefuck” (Cory Doctorow’s nickname for the guy) for another next two years, there is a silver lining: his ouster would have effectively rendered City Hall inert (which may not necessarily be a bad thing) and would have also led to another election that would cost the city millions. The downside is that while most people are capable of experiencing the emotion of shame, Ford isn’t, and it’s likely that this court victory will only embolden him and unfortunately, his fans in the cesspool of willful ignorance known as the comments sections of the Toronto Sun and National Post. Even so, there’s a silver lining for me: bad Rob Ford news means blogs posts that practically write themselves and also generate great ad revenue. I’m pretty sure Ford has indirectly paid for at least one of my flights to Florida.

So, in honour of the return of “Mayor Griffin”, I present the video above — a scene from the “Petoria” episode of Family Guy, in which Peter Griffin forms his own country and raps about his diplomatic immunity. I imagine Rob Ford’s doing a similar dance right now.

Bonus Feature: Which Quotes are Peter Griffin’s, and Which are Rob Ford’s?

I ran this back during the mayoral election in the article Toronto’s Mayoral Election is “Family Guy”!, in which I noted the similarities between Peter Griffin and Rob Ford, Stewie Griffin and George Smitherman and Mayor Adam West and Mayor David Miller. See if you can tell which ones belong to Peter and which one belong to Rob:

1. Go to the Orient, go to Hong Kong. You want to see workaholics? Those Oriental people work like dogs… they sleep beside their machines. The Oriental people, they’re slowly taking over… they’re hard, hard workers.
2. Someday a white man’s gonna to be elected President again.
3. Do you have a job, sir? I’ll give you a newspaper to find a job, like everyone else has to do between 9 and 5.
4. They accuse me all the time of not liking gays…which I do.
5. (AIDS) is very preventable. If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn’t get AIDS probably, that’s bottom line.
6. Gays don’t vomit. They’re a very clean people. And they’ve been that way ever since they came over to this country from France.
7. How are women getting (AIDS)? Maybe they are sleeping with bisexual men.
8. Women aren’t people. They are devices built by the lord Jesus Christ for our entertainment.
9. I can’t support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.
10. I don’t come down to Burger King and tell you how to do your job.
11. The reason I forgot about the marijuana charge … is because that same evening, I was charged with failing to give a breath sample.
12. The Nutcracker had zero physical comedy. And, and, with a name like the Nutcracker, I thought, oh, this would be worth a few yucks. But no…that title wrote a check those queers on stage refused to cash.
13. Do you want your little wife to go over to Iran and get raped and shot?
14. I don’t understand. Number one, I don’t understand a transgender, I don’t understand, is it a guy dressed up like a girl or a girl dressed up like a guy?
15. How ’bout THAT side boob? That turn you on? Well, it shouldn’t. That’s MY side boob.

If you want the answers, see my earlier article.