And I still believe this, even when you bring in all the other bad stuff Ford is supposed to have done: the prostitutes; the calling the cab driver a “Paki.” I appreciate this doesn’t look good on paper. Or off paper, come to that. But even then I can’t honestly say I find any of this stuff seriously problematic. No, not even the casual racism.
See, it seems to me that the Rob Ford affair goes to show how far removed our current thinking is from basic commonsense. We hear that he used a pejorative racial epithet and instead of going: “Well he was drunk. And most people are slightly racist in one way or another, even if only in anger or in jest. And really what the hell does it matter anyway? It’s not like he uses such terms in his public speeches, or like it has ever impinged on his political policies…”
