I'm kind of fascinated by Ivor Tossell and Daniel Dale's reactions on twitter to the way people are talking about Ford's medical situation. They almost seem hurt by the way people are talking. I haven't seen much nasty stuff myself, just a lot of people saying they don't believe it and a lot of conspiracy theories that seem to fit.
It's just that it's hard to point out the obvious holes in the story without sounding like an asshole or a Ford Truther. The Fords will always skate so long as people are polite and give them the benefit of the doubt.
Pertinent tweet:
Daniel Dale @ddale8 · 2h
There hasn't been this much conspiracy-theorizing around Toronto since May '13. This time: people who mocked people who did it that time.
Here's what I think, from 2700 km away: The mound of verbiage expelled by Rob, Doug and supporters over their entire political careers, and especially since Crack Vid One became a thing, is mostly toxic lies and bullshit, to a degree unprecedented in Canadian politics. That's made some reasonable people so angry that it's hard for them to believe that some--not much--of the stuff in that giant mound could be true.
To me the simplest explanation for everything is that the Fords are idiots. They're idiots with a lot of energy, close to zero capacity to think about ethics, and insane ideological delusions about how much better they are at running things than anybody else could be. But mostly, they're idiots.
I'm pretty sure Doug thought through the Doug for Mayor, Rob for Ward 2 scenario a long time ago, because even an idiot could foresee the possibility that Rob could screw up in a way (booze, drugs, violence, etc.) that made him not viable for reelection as mayor.
I find it extremely unlikely that some kind of benign tumour was diagnosed in May, or whenever, and at that point some sort of scheme was cooked up about how Rob could fake much-worse-than-before abdominal pain two days before the deadline for getting names on or off ballots, if it looked like he was certain to lose the mayoral race. It's even more unlikely that a whole bunch of health care people could either be innocent dupes or career-riskingly corrupt.
It just seems way more likely to me that Doug, Mom and Rob (and whoever else influences decisions) are making things up in reaction to events that they mostly don't control.
