It is hard to believe that it is so easy to con Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star. The provincial affairs specialist wrote a piece the other day admiring the new version of premier Doug Ford he is seeing at Queen’s Park. What Regg Cohn is missing is that at a time when the rest of the world is fighting the war against the novel coronavirus, Ontario premier Doug Ford is campaigning as though the next provincial election is less than a month away.
The truth is that Doug Ford despises reporters such as Regg Cohn. I can hear the voice of his late brother Rob Ford at Doug’s ear telling him, “Do not abuse; Use.”
Rob Ford might have been a crack-cocaine smoking doper and a hard-drinker but he was also a very savvy politician. He took along his brother to do a radio program in Toronto and taught him what he needed to know. And Doug Ford, despite being a bellicose boor, learned his lessons. He is hardly a one trick pony today, with the false news on his Twitter feed with its highly biased version of ‘Ontario News Now.’ He is also offering to make special appearances (via telephone) on local radio stations around the province.
But, even if the station has any personnel left who are trained in newsgathering, Doug prefers to be interviewed by the scheduled disc jockeys. These used to be trained professionals years ago but where these ones were trained, or if they were, is a mystery to me. Doug is in control of these appearances. It is some of the worst political BS, I have heard in recent years. To listen to the premier talk so rapturously about our MPP—the less than adequate attorney general, our local member of the legislature. It is enough to get you to do a visual review of your breakfast.
And these amateur disc jockeys love it. Ford flatters them. His histrionics over covid-19 are embarrassing. His ignorance is relatively well hidden. He just follows the advice from the last century by author Dale Carnegie, to flatter fools fulsomely.
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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry
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