Among the saddest media moments of the last decade was the public self-destruction of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who made international headlines in 2013 for his public drunkenness, lewd behavior, and, later, videos of him smoking crack appearing on YouTube. He quickly became fodder for Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. He was an (embarrassing) topic of water cooler conversation for months. And the whole time, his family stood by him, denying that he was in any real danger.
“Robbie’s not a drug addict,” his sister, Kathy, told reporters. “If you want to consider binge drinking once every three months and you get totally plastered, which he just makes a fool out of himself…fine.”
We laugh at men like Ford, who died of cancer in 2016. I suppose we turn people like him into a perverse form of entertainment because it’s too painful to do otherwise. But we can’t run from it, anymore than we can ignore it when a squeaky clean teen idol changes her image to prosti-tot at exactly 12:01 am on her 18th birthday.
We’re not really any different. We are all prone to pretend that sin is something other than what it is….