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| courtesy of hc916 of Flickr |
When I was living in Chiba-ken all those years, I was witness to two Tokyo governors who had their own quirks. Governor Aoshima was basically an entertainer-in-drag-turned-ineffectual metropolitan manager whose only known achievement was naming the bayside Odaiba district Rainbow Town and then crooning "Over the Rainbow" in front of the amassed media.
Then there is the current governor, Shintaro Ishihara, who has gleefully ruffled feathers all across Asia with his extreme right-wing views...including giving out the statement in Washington D.C. a couple of weeks ago that the national government should just buy the disputed Senkaku Islands.
But I have to say that I don't think I've seen anyone like Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto. Since I got back, I've discovered that there is no middle ground with this guy....either Torontonians love him or they hate him. Whether it be that very public on-and-off diet thing with him and his councilor brother or the entire subway-vs.-LRT kerfuffle, he's managed to be very NOT boring.
And then comes 10 p.m. on CP24 where the two newscasters give out some Breaking News. Apparently, a Toronto Star reporter may have gotten a little too overzealous in his pursuit of the truth and allegedly trespassed onto Ford's property and shooting photos like a paparazzi, before a neighbour alerted Hizzoner. I just saw conservative Mayor Ford going majorly nuts in front of the assembled throng of media, threatening criminal charges and all that stuff. You can bet that the ultra-conservative Toronto Sun will have a field day tomorrow while the liberal Star will be doing their own spin on the gross misunderstanding. Once again, he's managed to be NOT boring.
