"Yeah it stings now / The world is so cold / Now that you've gone away"

Well, sad news out of T-dot today as Rob Ford has dropped out of the mayoral race to instead run in Etobicoke Ward 2, which will be tough because there won't be a single American talk show host capable of correctly pronouncing the word "Etobicoke". [fun fact, the boss here doesn't pronounce it properly either. Come to think of it, I don't think he also mispronounces the word "pronounce" -ed.

Wait, I hear you asking, isn't there already a Ford running for councilor in Etobicoke Ward 2? Well, there was: Ford nephew Michael is now running for school trustee in Etobicoke Ward 1 (and no, I don't understand why school trustee means he's switching wards). And just in case you think the Ford bouncy-ball game was confusing enough as it was, there will still be a Ford brother running for mayor: just Rob's brother Doug is running in his stead. Ford Nation started this week off with two Fords running for public office, and it finishes the week off with two Fords running as well.

Still, you gotta figure that FordNation is reeling a bit from this one. The way I see it, there's a two-fold problem. The first problem is that strictly speaking, Doug is more electable than Rob. Doug Ford doesn't come with the huge degree of personal difficulties that plague Rob Ford, from the substance abuse to the treatment of the press. Doug's platform, such as it will be, will be a little less crazy than Rob Ford's would be: after all, Doug is less crazy than Rob. The second problem, paradoxically enough, is that the whole reason for voting for Rob Ford in the 2014 Toronto mayoral race was purely to be a giant "fuck you" to the Toronto Red Star, southern Ontario sodomites, Robyn Doolittle, the left-wing media in general, and the forces of political correctness that determined Ford was guilty long before they had anything to find him guilty of. Re-electing Rob Ford was going to be great, it was going to signal another three years of the media circus around the Centre of the Universe, and give us hope that the plagues on Alberta (Queen Nenshi and Cowardly Don Iveson) could be expunged. We just needed our own Rob Ford to ride to the rescue, and his re-election would have made that ever more likely.

Instead, Doug Ford is there. It's no fun to vote for Doug Ford! Sure sure, it's the same family, extension of the race yadda yadda yadda. Rob Ford being out just takes all the fun out of the race, and as a result I'm forced to do what I didn't think I was going to have to do: remove my endorsement of Ford for Mayor.

It's all summarized, basically, in this image:

Rob was just fun, he was the jovial partying train wreck that may not have been the hero Goth--er, I mean, Toronto needed, but he was definitely the hero they deserved. Rob Ford, Etobicoke Councilor (and make no doubt, he's a huge favourite to win that race), just doesn't have the same ring to it. It won't excite Jimmy Kimmel, it won't be the butt of jokes on Conan O'Brien, and it won't piss the living shit out of Jon Stewart. In other words, even if Doug wins as mayor and Rob wins as councilor, it just won't be the same. It won't be fun. And if you don't want the mayor of Toronto to be fun, if you don't want Rob Ford constantly pissing off liberals in the job, you might as well settle for a less-snortworthy candidate in John Tory.

John Tory is not Olivia Layton.

I don't know what more I can say to endorse him than that. Indeed, there isn't much there to endorse him for. His transit plan is at best charitably characterized as less completely insane than his opponents...er, opponent. He's still got some wacko tree planting scheme. He plans on spending tax dollars on the same sort of people who hounded Rob Ford and masturbate nightly with dreams of Olivia Layton as mayor. He's also, if you haven't gotten the memo already, incredibly, inconceivably, unacceptably boring.

But, and say it with me everybody: John Tory is not Olivia Layton.

Rob Ford, like it or not, is gone. We'll never get to know if he did pull off the miraculous win: we do know that the two most disastrous things the Chow campaign has done so far has been hiring Catsmeat Kinsella, and firing Catsmeat Kinsella. We will never get to see the look on her face when, judging by recent polling numbers, she would have had to watch Rob Ford beat her (and, possibly, be crowned mayor) while she sulked away to her subsidized housing to have a good ol' cry. We'll never get the chance to, a week after Ford won the mayor's race, "accidentally" bump into Doolittle in the street and laugh at her and tell her how she lost. Doug Ford may well be mayor, but what's the point? We'll never get the chance to gloat, only play what-if and also know that Rob Ford's biggest haters won't have him around to kick anymore (which, judging by the left's reaction to Nixon, means they'll stop being a sputtering incoherent mess on the topic somewhere around 2093).

If all you get is a mayor who isn't Olivia Chow, you might as well just vote for John Tory. Get well soon, Rob.