Rob Ford, Belgium

A lot has happened in the last three years with me, but suffice to say that I now live in Japan. And it is wonderful, but this time difference kills me in terms of staying in the loop. I go to sleep and when I wake up I find out that A. there’s a huge terrorist attack in Belgium, and B. Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford died. 

30 dead people in an airport is too terrible for words, so I'm not going to try. It's an awful coincidence that after arresting one of the ringleaders of the November attacks in Paris, Belgium has an attack of its own. And the reaction back in North America is pretty terrible, with Cruz calling for patrols of Muslim neighbourhoods to prevent radicalization, and Trump being well, Trump.

A similar attack happened three days ago in Turkey in Istanbul and and Ankara, of course getting much less coverage. What's interesting--maybe this is a poor choice of words--is that the Brussels attacks were carried out by ISIS, and the Turkish attacks were allegedly carried out by Kurdish groups, who are fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. 

It’s really sad about Rob Ford dying, especially since he was such a loud, train-wreck of a man. Some voices have wondered if he was treated unfairly while in office, especially over the crack scandal. Others are much less sympathetic. I think people are afraid of speaking ill of the dead, which I think is a nice thought, but surely you can respect someone's death without completely fictionalizing their life. I hold to this principle: if you do horrible things in public view, people get to judge you for it. And if you run for public office, and fail to show up for work on time, embarrass yourself while exercising the functions of that office, and purposefully antagonize the local media, well, then people have a lot of material to judge you on.

Short version: his death was sad, but he was still a terrible, terrible public figure.