The mayor is the son of hippies and tried by a jury of librarians (in Rob Ford: The Opera)

Yesterday’s first and only performance of Rob Ford: The Opera was as packed as an all-night executive committee meeting, with over 800 people lining up for the free production. In the piece, Ford is the son of a pair of free-spirited beatniks (total fabrication), hacks away at city services (true story!) and is ultimately put on trial by a “jury of bespectacled, knitting, angry librarians.” Our friends at Torontoist go on to describe the show as “unforgiving, completely exaggerated and shallow in addressing the confusing web of municipal decisions Ford’s made in just over a year in office.” Though that’s probably accurate, we saw a clip from the performance and we have to admit, it also looks hilarious. Read the entire story [Torontoist] »
In mrgeing the six municipalities, the Harris government was seeking to reduce the size of government and the number of people employed by it. That’s a fundamental tenet of Randian philosophy, the notion that government screws up anything and everything it touches and should therefore be reduced to as small a size as possible. The creation of the megacity certainly meets that criteria.I’d be interested to see the poll results projected onto a map. I suspect you’d see some very clear gradients of support for Ford, and that his support in the core is strongest in the parts of it that are closest to the suburbs. Certainly, their votes carry as much weight as somebody living in a hard loft on Queen Street east, but I still think this is an issue that’s informed by urban geography. The suburbs, after all, don’t stop at the Etobicoke city limits.