Toronto City Life » Surprise! Rob Ford gives up on “cutting the waist”

Surprise! Rob Ford gives up on “cutting the waist”

Posted on May 28th, 2012 –

I’d already been telling people that Rob Ford had given up on losing weight for a number of weeks now, even though technically he had merely “postponed” his weekly weigh-ins. But based on his record, I was pretty sure he’d give it up altogether. And today I was proven right:

“I don’t care about the weigh-in,” Mr. Ford said Sunday on his weekly Newstalk 1010 radio show, which he hosts with his brother, Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford. “I’m not even dieting anymore.”

…

In the same radio program, Mayor Ford pledged to cut the city’s property tax hike to only 2% for 2013. This year, Toronto property owners were hit with a 2.5% rise in property taxes — the first in two years.

The Toronto Sun, a newspaper that insists on supporting the Mayor at all costs, has tried to spin this announcement by saying that he will continue to lose weight “privately”, despite the fact that he repeated more than once that he won’t.

You may not know this but the whole stunt was supposed to be for charity, and it ended up being the only opportunity for the media to meet with Ford as he started to withdraw from public life (with 2 years left on the clock). Of course, he’s blamed the same media for being in a “frenzy”, despite the fact that he invited them to attend the very public weekly weigh in. Just like all good hypocritical jerkholes, he simply can’t take responsibility for any of his failures.

The Cut the Waist website is still up, presumably because brother Doug is still getting pledges, but you gotta wonder exactly where some of that money is going, or if it’ll ever materialize. For example, some of the dubious pledges made include:

Cornell S – Kentuckky Fried Chicken – $10.00

Robette F – Shake Your Keys To Distract Me – $0.25

Fred S – I Cannot Keep Promises Foundation – $1.00
Robert G – Toupes Of Hope – $1.00
Sam X – The Idea Fund Of Sam Xu – $25.00
Roy G – Cacti Association Of Canada – $13.37
Stacey N – Matt Foley Motivational Speaking – $0.25

…while other “charities” would probably not have been very inspiring to the Ford brothers:

Kathleen S – Pride Toronto – $1.00
Maureen O – Pride Toronto – $5.00
Mary H – Toronto Public Library Foundation – $1.00

The site claims that Rob has lost 22 lbs but this seems to be closer to 16. In an interesting comparison, Ford’s much-maligned predecessor, David Miller, lost 50 lbs while in office, but without inviting the media to monitor his progress in order to gob off about it or slagging other mayors in the process. Whatever the case, it’s clear that this is an indication of a much larger problem (if you’ll pardon the pun). Adam Vaughan sums it up perfectly:

Councillor Adam Vaughan said Ford should learn a lesson from his very public weight-loss campaign that was rolled out with such fanfare in January.

“When you engage in publicity stunts they can blow up in your face,” Vaughan said Monday. “That’s why my advice to him all along has been enough with the slogans and the stunts, your job is to be the mayor. It seems he invested more time in jumping on and off the scales then he did jumping in and out of meetings here at City Hall.”

Vaughan said it’s clear Ford is a “part-time mayor”.