Roger Ebert decidedly underwhelmed by Toronto’s election of Rob Ford

Roger Ebert decidedly underwhelmed by Toronto’s election of Rob Ford

(Image: Will Perkins)

The city of Toronto holds a special place in Roger Ebert’s heart. We saw that during this year’s TIFF, when the critic’s Twitter stream was filled with mash notes to the city. It’s also the city where he joined AA and began his journey to sobriety. The election of Rob Ford seems to have hit Ebert a little hard. From his Twitter stream on Wednesday, in the aftermath of the American midterm elections:

Meanwhile, Toronto elects a mayor who doesn’t believe in public transit, arts funding, environment or homosexuality. Toronto?

He followed that up with a tweet linking to one of Rob Ford’s greatest YouTube hits—the one about cyclists not belonging on roads (if it’s hard to remember, the chorus is “it’s their fault”). For the record, we’re pretty sure that Ford “believes in” homosexuality; he just believes in “traditional families” more.

Roger Ebert has more than a quarter-million Twitter followers, so the mayor-elect probably just got his biggest social media bump of the whole year. That, and almost all of Ebert’s followers can reliably be said to be scratching their heads and asking “Rob who?”

• Roger Ebert [Twitter]