About the author:

Stephen HumphreyStephen Humphrey
Stephen Humphrey is a freelance writer and journalist who has lived in Toronto since 1994...
Follow Stephen on Twitter

Tags:

, , Toronto Transit Commision,

Share this article:

OMG! Did you hear? Adam Giambrone cheated on his girlfriend and the other woman called the press because she totally thought he was married, which he wasn’t but then she read it in the paper and, like, totally went public.

OMG! That’s, like, so Tiger Woods!

You bet. Toronto city councillors are finally giving the city a show. I mean, the garbage strike was all kinds of thrills and spills, but it was messy and called for audience participation.

Now the city has a straightforward sex scandal. Despite the inherent initial shocker that there is, in fact, one municipal councillor who doesn’t need Viagra, the whole thing has unfolded with maudlin predictability.

Giambrone, who generally looks younger than his 32 years, faces the press looking like a bashful 12-year-old as he informs Torontonians he’s let down his girlfriend, fellow councillors, human civilization, god and Buddha by sleeping with multiple women. He tearfully withdraws from the mayoral race.

Councillor Denzel Minnan-Wong, always up for grabbing a little face-time, demands Giambrone’s resignation as Toronto Transit Commission chair. On camera he looks like a sullen 10-year-old.

Businesses and residents between Dovercourt and Lansdowne, outraged about the loss of parking spots to streetcar routes, say they always knew he couldn’t be trusted.

Journalists, sensing greatness around the corner through their exposure of civic peccadilloes, pull out their Bartlett’s Quotations and wax literary.

For example, Toronto Star reporter Linda Diebel writes:

“In making the decision of a lifetime, Adam Giambrone lived through a long, dark night of the soul.”

Nice. Here, let me try one:

“Yesterday the Toronto Transit Commissioner took an emergency short-turn on the Streetcar Named Desire.”

Too Blanche Dubois?

Okay, how about:

“Would you could you on a train? Would you could you in an elected public official’s office?”

Meanwhile, commentators in various media blabber on about “Blah-blah-blah role model… Blah-blah-blah Tiger Woods…”

At least we can be thankful that Canadians still don’t have the gumption to construct some monstrosity like Fox News. Otherwise we’d have a six-pack of commentators with bared fangs and retro hairstyles, frothing with indignation in some tic-tac-toe split-screen thing.

Nonetheless, like all reality television, the matter seems more scripted than fiction.

And I may be a bad citizen for saying so, but am I supposed to care about all this? It’s gaudy, there’s sex, but what is it besides someone’s private life?

It’s the 21st century. Should I have to revert to a turn-of-the-century Baptist every time a politician gets down?

Or why should anyone maintain the 18th-century fiction that politicians – especially city politicians – are these Napoleonic figures who stride through halls of power clothed in some patina of virtue?

And we wonder why politicians lie. They say things they don’t mean that we don’t believe, but we’re more comfortable with the denial. Sounds like a cheating relationship, doesn’t it? We’re such enablers.

Anyway, it’s our role as voters is to elect people, not canonize them, right?

And sure, it’s true that infidelity hurts people, and for certain Giambrone is accountable to certain individuals in his life. But did he harm his constituents? And please don’t bring up the parking spots. There’s more to life than parking.

Can Giambrone handle transportation issues or not should be the question. Instead, the question is becoming whether transit’s future will slide with the personality so closely tied to it.

This is a crucial time for transit projects in Toronto. Ten-year projects such as a city-wide LRT are in early stages, subject to fickle winds of funding. The city just wrote a big cheque to Bombardier to build new streetcars. There’s adjustment to Metrolinx, the TTC’s adopted big brother.

Then there are fare hikes, labour issues, customer revolts, plus councillors and mayoral candidates – many now on the warpath against Giambrone’s virility – using the phrase “war on cars.”

Finally there’s an election in the works that could shake up all of the above like a tumbler full of bingo balls.

I, for one, hope we can get all the innuendo and outrage out of our system and get back to, you know, issues.

What’s more crucial for this city - an actionable vision for public transit or what’s behind some councillor’s pants?