Why Americans South of the 49th Parallel Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Why Americans South of the 49th Parallel Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

“You in the West have no idea what it’s like to be ruled by peasants.”

- Mihai in Balkan Ghosts

1. Rob Ford on that wrecking ball with Miley Khardassian and Kim Cyrus would pretty much epitomize contemporary pop culture.
2. Rob Ford appeals to the sort of person who, without any sense of irony, uses “hater” as an expression of opprobrium.
3. Rob Ford makes Glenn Beck seem almost reasonable.
4. Any mention of “Toronto Mayor Rob Ford” on the Orwellian telescreen updates the old Bob Newhart (“Hi, Bob!”) game.
5. Our Darwinian friends are reinvigorated, and can shout with Merry Generic Winter Holiday glee to the rest of us “Aha! The Missing Link at last! We told you so!”
6. USA-ians tend to perceive Canada as a nation of kind, thoughtful, industrious, educated people who, after a hard day of building igloos and cuddling harp seals, put away their red coats and spend their leisure hours exchanging Shakespearean bon mots in both English and French while cataloging the origins of Newfoundland sea-chanties in a Tim Horton’s across the street from Canadian Tire, compared with whom we are a lot of indolent slobs who care only for football and takeout; Rob Ford is an occasion for schadenfreude, our one opportunity to point a disapproving finger due north and crow “Nanny, nanny boo-booooo!”
7. Given that south-of-the-border Orwellian telescreen programming favorites include Duck Dynasty, Jerry Springer, and Doctor Phil, Rob Ford seems to be a real tater-chip-sody-water Yank.
8. In this coming season of Black Friday Weekend (which replaces the old, colonialist, imperialist, eat-animal-flesh Thanksgiving) one can fantasize about Rob Ford visiting Martha Stewart and knocking over her perfect Christmas tree while cracked out.
9. Consider Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in a sumo wrestling match. Hey, it’s a thought. Strange thought. Okay, maybe not.
10. Parents no longer threaten naughty children with the bogey-man; they threaten ‘em with Rob Ford.
11. Whenever sub-49th-parallelians feel depressed about unemployment, the Affordable Health Care Act, the scorn with which their decaying nation is held by others, and the sad reality that the death penalty does not apply to the man who invented reality shows, they can always lighten the mood and, indeed, elicit sustained laughter by using “Rob Ford,” “Justin Bieber,” and “Canada” in the same sentence.
12. The existence of Rob Ford convinces even the loopiest racial supremacists in Massachusetts and Idaho that God really doesn’t consider them to be His last word.
13. Rob Ford and Honey Boo-Boo – soulmates? Or simply cousins somewhere along a DNA continuum we just don’t need to know about?
14. Those who exist on the New York-Chicago-Los Angeles Axis of infobrainpuddingment are grateful to Canada for introducing them to high culture – Moulsen’s, hockey, Rob Ford, and swerving around dead moose on the Trans-Canada Highway.
15. Finally, the USA and its New Model Army of Plain Women can be grateful that General Isaac Brock, Chief Tecumseh, and the lads kicked General Stephen Van Rensselaer III, the other lads, and all their blunderbusses back across the Niagara River in 1812. The possibility that Rob Ford could have been elected President of the United States gives anyone a dead-moose-in-the-road feeling.

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I Pledge to...

Mack Hall

Sycophants in an Echo Chamber

A flock of the fashionable, like guinea-hens yakking in middle of the road, recently made public pledges to be the President’s servants in all things dim and dutiful. Naturally they made a MeMeMeTubeMyFace video, and appear to have employed an echo chamber ("I pledge…I pledge…I pledge…"), though perhaps that is merely an effect of vain repetition.

As a response to those craven obedientiaries I propose somewhat more meaningful pledges:

I pledge…pledge…pledge (ya like that echo effect?) to be no man’s servant and no man’s master.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to use real bulbs until Dear Leader’s Light Bulb Czar’s Special Incandescent Action Unit catches me and prosecutes me into oblivion.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to buy the biggest car I can afford and to make frequent and unnecessary trips.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to buy coffee without a Fair Trade label.

I pledge…pledge…pledge always to love America and to remain unsophisticated and non-Euro.

I pledge…pledge…pledge not to pay much attention to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. The best of folks suffer flaws, but I see no reason why any responsible, self-disciplined American should sacrifice a minute of God’s precious gift of life to a couple of impenitent, dysfunctional, draft-dodging, chemically-dependent, wholly self-centered, shrieking nutters. They seem so European.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to turn the thermostat in my house to where I want it, not to where The Thermostat Czar wants it.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to eat chunks of dead animals more often. Vegetarianism is for Manichaeans.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to employ chemical pesticides and fertilizers on my yard and garden.

I pledge…pledge…pledge never to drink coffee brewed from the excreta of cats. I love ya, Al, but not that much.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to repudiate and resist the edicts of any of Dear Leader’s thirty-three or so extra-Constitutional czars. We don’t need no stinking czars.

I pledge…pledge…pledge that when the grocery store asks me "Paper? Or plastic?" I will ask for both so that I won’t miss a chance to overheat the planet and stress the whales and polar bears.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to do my best to avoid companies who advertise that they are environmentally friendly. If they want me to pay them money for a product or service they’d darned well better be Mackly friendly.

Unlike the rich and slovenly, I pledge…pledge…pledge to dress in clothes that don’t look as if they have been stolen from a Salvation Army donation bin.

I pledge…pledge…pledge to vote, vote, vote. Always.