There are a ton of people in the public eye who seem to have no shame and little sense that they need to separate their public and private livers: Rob Ford looks from here to be as much of an archetype as a body could want. Council meetings are so prosaic they put him to sleep, the cure for which seems to be missing them altogether, or leaving early to go coach a high school football team, a team that seems to have the benefit of TTC taxi service to the detriment of a swack of passengers removed from a city bus so that Ford’s team could have a ride. And what don’t we get about the need to pay attention on the road? Everyone else is at risk when a driver texts or reads behind the wheel, but it’s quite all right for Hizzoner. Whatever the whole sad litany turns out to be, Mr. Ford doesn’t seem to see what the problem is, even when he votes on money matters where he clearly has a stake in the outcome. Hmmm. Would that Mr. Ford be an exceptional case, but we seem to live in a world where sociopaths are thick on the ground, where none of these clowns is at all responsible for anything and where the public not only gets stuck with the downstream effects, but seems either silly enough or ignorant enough, or both, to hand the reins of power and pocketbook to legions of immoral twits. Given the propensity that much of the citizenry shows for lounging with reality television and spending themselves into debt while the commons disappears along with the biosphere, there doesn’t seem to be a lot for humanity (or the rest of life) to look forward to. You’d think Mr. Mayor could at least have the good grace to say “Oops!” and become a full-time coach and whatever else he did before he turned municipal politics into a gong show.