Dear Editor
Today, I read about a rich white kid in Texas who was given a probation instead of a prison sentence for driving drunk and causing an accident that killed four people. Just prior to that I watched a news program on TV and saw Doug Ford, the rich Toronto city councillor and brother of the mayor of Toronto, randomly handing out $20 bills from a wad in his hand to people in a crowd. Both of these further reinforced my growing suspicion that there is a double standard of law enforcement for rich white folks and for all the rest of us, especially those who are poor, or even tougher for those who are poor and black or aboriginal.
Of course, the daily news stories of Rob Ford's adventures with drinking, drugs and gangster associates, which would have led to the immediate ending of his political career, if not his arrest, were he not white and rich - with lots of rich and influential friends, including a PM fishing buddy - has had me wondering how he could be still the mayor and out of jail. What if he happened to be an ordinary black guy or an aboriginal guy who just happened to have been elected mayor because voters liked his policies? I think that first story of the existence of a possible video of his smoking crack in questionable company would have had him forced to at least resign before an almost certain impending arrest.
But there is no such nasty unpleasantness for Rob Ford. So far, even the equivalent of the Texas kid's probation seems to have actually offended Ford, rather than for him to appreciate how easy it's been for him so far. His own sense of a kind of rich kid's entitlement gives him a feeling of being unfairly dealt with by people who are his inferiors. Unfortunately, his anger is almost palpable, and attracts some people who may be angry about their own lives and could see Ford as someone who is strong, standing up to the "elite," and could be the kind of leader they would vote for. As well, there are those other rich folks who may have little love for Ford, but would back him because of his low-tax and small-government policies, along with his probable support from those angry losers out there. He might run again, for even a higher office!
So, for me, the "ongoing story" of Mayor Ford has a couple of layers of interest: one, the inequalities in our society, and the other, the short comings of our electoral systems. We could all learn different things from it.
Russell Lahti
Battleford
