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Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story (2014)

by Robyn Doolittle(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

067006811X (ISBN13: 9780670068111)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Penguin Global

review 1: I put off reading this because I didn't think the whole...circus...warrented a book. It did and Robin wrote a fine, interesting, fun, intelligent book on a topic that is none of those things. I'd like to throw Ford out of a window but I never once wanted to do that with this book. (Fun story: my default blow-off to people who are unexplainably crazy is "crackhead". So I'm reading and I'm like "fucking crackhead..." AND HE ACTUALLY IS)
review 2: Come for the scandal, stay for the insightful look into the political powers in Toronto and the life and times of journalists. This book is as much about the author as it is about the scandal-plagued mayor of Toronto -- not very journalistic of her, I thought. I wanted to tut-tut her a few times as I read details of her... more own journey into the story, since (I understand) the first rule of journalism is that the story is never about the writer. However, I gave her some leeway since this is, after all, a book-length story, not an article in the Toronto Star, and as it turns out, the story of Ford is also the story of the Star. Almost since the beginning of the whole crack cocaine scandal, Ford accused the media, the Star in particular, of attempting to crucify him. Robyn Doolittle here shows that the paper was only trying do its due diligence to uncover the truth about the mayor's un-mayorly activities, a task that was made Herculean by Ford's incessant and borderline pathological lies. While the narrative jumped around a little more than I would have liked, I appreciated that the story is not linear, and involves many elements, including the mayor's substance abuse, his family's history of drug abuse and criminal charges as well as its social and political position, and the police investigations that finally resulted in exposing Rob Ford's activities. The book ends long before the story is actually over, since, after the book came out, Ford entered rehab, and the story will continue from there. As shocking as the tabloid details of Ford's actions are, what Doolittle succeeds in revealing here is the shocking acceptance of the people of Toronto. I do not live in Toronto (I'm safely tucked up here on the opposite coast), so perhaps I don't understand just how ready the city was for the administrative and fiscal changes that Rob Ford was able to bring in. Over and over, "Ford Nation" has declared its support of those policies, and has blindly decided to follow their leader over the rainbow. My own personal opinion, based on the media coverage I was exposed to throughout the past year-plus, has not changed. I have always felt that if the people of Toronto re-elect Ford (elections will be held in November 2014), despite the deception that inevitably accompanies a dependence on substances, then they get what they deserve. Perhaps that sounds a little harsh, but I believe that is Robyn Doolittle's message with this book as well. She lays out everything, and people need only read it to discover the truth. less

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