The Final Days of Rob Ford
Live updates from a media death cult.
We want him to die.
Not maliciously, you understand — never maliciously — but for professional reasons. The story demands it. The logic of the story is paramount here. It has the weight of inevitability.
It’s the same weight that seemed to propel him into office and then into his blitzkrieg of a first year on the job. In those dark days, he and his brother seemed unstoppable. All the citizen’s filibusters, facts of funding, strange conflicts of interest, petty corruptions, and procedural oversights couldn’t divert him from his mission to stop the gravy train at all costs, even as it slowly dawned that there wasn’t all that much gravy on the train to begin with.
Now, when we talk about trains, we talk about a train wreck. His train wreck; a careening collection of strange allegations, stranger denials, and a clear sense that things are climaxing, somehow.
We’re already setting the stage for him to die.
“We don’t want to wake up in a week and find him dead in a ditch knowing we could have done something to stop this,” the one-time aide tells Maclean’s in a nice bit of foreshadowing, “He resigns as mayor or he’s dead in a ditch—I don’t know what comes first. Honestly.”
Ford insists there will be no resignation. His political opponents are trying to concern troll him out of office. Twitter is awash in tweets and retweets about the latest twist. Every story is doing monster traffic and every outlet is running dozens of stories. Editors are scrolling through their Outlook contacts looking for reporters to cover angles. What’s the race angle? What’s the privilege angle? How is this like a police procedural? Are there more addicts to write open letters? How about someone who was married to an addict? What’s the Remembrance Day angle? What’s the relationship with his brother? Can we make a list of some kind? Can we also do a funny list? What about a map? Can we get fan fiction about what rehab would be like?
There will be no rehab, his family insists.
This can’t go on forever and it’s inconceivable that it might just fizzle out, so we wait for him to die.
What else can we do? We, like he, are caught up in this machinery. We’ve been infected by the idea of stories. We think things have beginnings, middles, and ends. We talk about soap operas, plot twists, and casts of characters, which is what allows us to process the horror of the mounting count of people dead or injured who had the misfortune of being near Rob Ford or the video at some point. We understand them as bit players. Victims from central casting, rather than people in their own right.
Coverage has metastasized now. It’s out of control, if it was ever under control. Coverage is covering each other’s coverage. The media circus has taken on a momentum of its own and there is nothing for people of good conscience to do but buckle down and ride it out to the bitter end. The obituaries have been written already — they always are for a famous person, especially one in a death spiral. Every outlet is ready to publish, should they be so lucky as to get the final scoop.
When this is all over, we will stop and conduct a post-mortem. We will ponder the excesses, both his and ours. We will talk about our role in his downfall. We will ask who went too far, who didn’t go far enough, and when we crossed what lines. We will ask about the impact on his family, and supporters, and legacy. We will write and publish all of that too.
Forgive us, we don’t know any better. We don’t know how to be any better. The only solution we know to journalism is more journalism. And journalism, above all, must Get The Story.
cc photo by West Annex News
