There is a story in the news that has become my guilty pleasure. It has had more crazy revelations and antics than a trashy reality TV show. But since it’s being covered by the likes of CNN, it doesn’t come with nearly the same level of shame when you tune in or look for updates online. This story involves drugs, cover-ups, politics and, of course, a possibility of an actual reality show following the particular individual’s notorious rise to notoriety.
The story I have been caught up in is not of another child star falling off the wagon or quasi-celebrity housewife caught in a cheating scandal, but the tale of a mayor of a city of nearly 3 million admitting to smoking crack cocaine.
Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto, Canada, admitted to smoking crack cocaine and has been under a media firestorm as a result of that and a seemingly never-ending stream of scandals.
Before we get into these scandals, Rob Ford was elected as mayor of Toronto, Canada’s largest city and on that purports itself as being the cultural, entertainment and financial capital of the country. Close to 400,000 Toronto voters elected him as mayor. Prior to becoming mayor, he served as a city councilor, an elected position, for a decade.
And now for the juicy stuff: This guy admitted, on film, to smoking crack cocaine within the past year. In attempts to justify it, he said that it must have been in one of his “drunken stupors.” That’s some pretty hard partying for a man elected to lead Canada’s largest city, if you ask me. The more you look into this guy, the stranger and weirder the story gets. He brazenly resists common decency even when national and continental news station reporters are filming him. He swears, drunkenly threatens to beat people, has bulldozed through a city council meeting and knocked a councilor to the ground and unabashedly goes into detail about his bedroom activities.
Is this a warning sign of the direction that politics are going? Is it too late to make a U-turn? With the onset of social media and smart phones that can instantly capture an image or video and then post it onto the internet, politicians are never truly “off duty.” In the past, scandals could be covered up, and indiscretions could never see the light of day. Now, we have full disclosure to a person’s past and present.
The question remains, however, if this trend will help or hurt. Will we get to see politicians “as they really are” and therefore make wiser choices with our votes? Or will scandals become so common place that we dismiss them, lowering our standards? Will we reward scandal and raise these fallen politicians to the height of celebrity status — complete with book and TV deals? Are brash, crack cocaine-smoking politicians the next “big thing” for the beltway?
Anna Rush is a law student from Hattiesburg. She graduated from Mississippi State University in 2011.
