[URBAN NOTE] "Big, Obnoxious Toronto Mayor Visits Chicago, Blends In Too Well"

The NBC Chicago blog post by Edward McClelland seems to be the most noteworthy coverage given to Chicago media to Rob Ford's visit to our North American Midwest sister city. Chicagolanders I asked on Facebook noted that they hadn't heard of it, or that they had heard of it only through their Canadian friends' feeds.

It is not flattering.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford spent two days in Chicago, and nobody noticed. The controversial Canadian mayor?s trade visit, which coincided with the end of our city?s first teacher strike in 25 years, was huge news in Canada.

Here, it didn?t make the Tribune or the Sun-Times. Maybe that?s because, as I found out when I wrote a Great Lakes travelogue, Americans don?t want to read about Canada. Or maybe it?s because Ford didn?t look at all like a foreigner in Chicago. Although the Toronto Sun portrayed him as Jake Blues, he actually looks more like Jim Belushi?s brother-in-law on According to Jim than John Belushi. And he has the personality of Saturday Night Live motivational speaker Matt Foley. Ford is so loud and obese it wouldn?t have been surprising if he?d applied for asylum in the United States.

More on that in a moment. After taking a boat tour of downtown Chicago, Ford had a private half-hour meeting with Mayor Rahm Emanuel. They talked about the two cities? business relationships, as well as garbage pickup, an unglamorous housekeeping task of mayors everywhere. They also discussed labor issues, or labour issues, if you're reading this in Canada. Ford recently signed a four-year deal with his city?s workers.

?I?ve been up to Toronto a great deal, and I?m proud that we are going to renew our sister city relationship,? Emanuel said at a press conference after the meeting. ?The similarities are not just in the business community or in our geography. Chicago is the most American of American cities.?

And Toronto is the most American of Canadian cities. It has franchises in the NBA, Major League Baseball and MLS, and now hosts a Buffalo Bills game each year. It?s ethnically diverse, with large immigrant populations from the Caribbean and Asia. And if you?re a Canadian who wants to make it big in business or see your name in lights -- two American traits -- you go to Toronto. Emanuel acknowledged that Toronto is in Chicago?s league as an international city.

?Today, the economies that are being driven are being driven by the 100 most dynamic cities that have the energy, the culture, the business and the dynamism that people want to be a part of, and Toronto and Chicago are two of those cities in the top tier of the world,? he said.

McClelland then went on to recount an incident when a drunken Rob Ford began screaming insults and obscenities at a couple watching a Toronto Maple Leafs game. Chicago's mayor Rahm Emanuel, McClelland concludes, at least uses that kind of language in private.

Here in Canada, Steve Kupferman's Torontoist overview and Rosie DiManno's </a>article in the Toronto Star are not-unrepresentative samplings of the contemptuous coverage of Ford's actions that's become normative.</a>

Source: http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/3193831.html

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