{"id":20461,"date":"2013-05-28T07:47:41","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T12:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20461"},"modified":"2013-05-28T07:47:41","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T12:47:41","slug":"toronto-and-class-snobbery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/05\/28\/toronto-and-class-snobbery\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto and class snobbery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Andrew-Gee<\/a> explains just why the “great and good” of Toronto’s self-consciously progressive “elite” are appalled over Rob Ford — it’s class snobbery colouring everything:<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t Doug Ford\u2019s drug vending that has the city gasping and reaching for the smelling salts. The thing that really shocks the haute bourgeoisie<\/em> of downtown Toronto is how tacky the Fords seem. I mean, gold chains?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong: you can fault the Fords for plenty on the merits alone. But it\u2019s their style that really rankles. For many, it feels like The Beverly Hillbillies<\/em> have taken over at City Hall.<\/p>\n

At first, this seems incongruous with the Fords\u2019 enormous wealth. The family label business is worth millions. Rob and Randy Ford drive Cadillac Escalades. How could such rich people be the subject of classist snobbery?<\/p>\n

Because class isn\u2019t really about wealth. George Orwell knew as much in 1945, when he wrote, \u201cAnyone who pays attention to class differences at all would regard an army officer with \u00a31000 a year as socially superior to a shopkeeper with \u00a32000 a year.\u201d This holds more or less true in Canada today. The Fords are the shopkeepers with \u00a32000 a year. For all their wealth and power, they remain members of the petit bourgeois<\/em>, the lower middle class. Their status is inscribed into everything they do, not least their drug scandals.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

The fact is, Rob and Doug Ford are hosers. They say \u201ceh?\u201d They say, \u201cHooooly Christ!\u201d when they walk into cameras. It\u2019s not hard to imagine them saying \u201cfriggin.\u2019\u201d They are \u201cbranded on the tongue,\u201d as Orwell put it \u2014 their accents are just indelibly hoserish. It\u2019s hard to describe, but imagine the middle of their sentences reaching a high, squeaky pitch of incredulity, then descending to a thudding, exhaling indignation: \u201cYou hit me with a camera.\u201d \u201cJeeez, eh?\u201d<\/p>\n

Even removing the filter of their Doug-and-Bob-MacKenzie accents, the Ford diction often conveys the family\u2019s class origin in a way that makes left-wing elites either giggle or retch. Take one representative example from Doug Ford\u2019s Global News interview, transcribed verbatim. The whole thing needs a big, meta, square-bracketed sic<\/em>: \u201cTheir allegations were unfounded, unnamed sources, and, is that the best the Globe and Mail<\/em> has? Is that the best, thirty years ago? They wanna go back when I was in high school? Come on Jackson: gimme a break.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Colby Cosh<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Andrew-Gee explains just why the “great and good” of Toronto’s self-consciously progressive “elite” are appalled over Rob Ford — it’s class snobbery colouring everything: It isn\u2019t Doug Ford\u2019s drug vending that has the city gasping and reaching for the smelling salts. The thing that really shocks the haute bourgeoisie of downtown Toronto is how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,84,28],"tags":[354,636,907,207],"class_list":["post-20461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-media","tag-georgeorwell","tag-robford","tag-snobbery","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5k1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20462,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20461\/revisions\/20462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}