Advertisement

News

Doug Ford, needing a win, tries to join Team Roy

Doug Ford shared a photo (left) on Twitter that looks like he's playing a Roy on Succession (right).

Doug Ford. Logan Roy. It’s like looking in a mirror, right?

One is the premier of Ontario, doing everything he can to project the image of a leader who’s doing everything he can to steer the province through a devastating new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The other is a character on the Emmy-winning HBO series Succession (which NOW named last year’s #2 television show) who wears expensive suits and curses out his kids pretty much 24/7. I love Brian Cox, who plays Logan Roy. I am not quite so fond of Doug Ford.

After weathering a full day of bad-to-worse press for once again waiting too long to invoke new COVID-19 restrictions as the Omicron variant burned through the province, Doug clearly needed a win. So Team Ford set up a photo op at the Toronto Congress Centre, where the premier and long-term care minister Rod Phillips announced additional surge capacity beds for LTC residents and hospital patients.

You may remember Phillips as Doug’s former finance minister, who thoughtfully took the time to stage his 2020 fireside holiday photos before flying off to St. Bart’s for a Christmas vacation while Ontarians were still being told to restrict their activities. You may also remember Doug making noises about how very, very cross he was with Phillips for doing that, accepting his resignation and then eventually naming him minister of long-term care because I guess there wasn’t any more damage that could be done to that file.

Surprise! COVID-19 is surging again, hence the need for those additional sickbeds as the health-care system is strained to capacity – and maybe beyond – by the surge of cases. Why are cases surging? Because the province didn’t act quickly enough to limit transmission last month, when the higher communicability of Omicron was inarguable. Estimates have it as three times more infectious than the Delta variant, though hospitalizations and deaths remain thankfully low. But even an asymptomatic case requires days of isolation, which reduces the number of health-care workers available to the public.

Anyway, it’s an election year and Doug needs to look like a tough, decisive strongman if he wants to keep his base of reactionary conservatives, a lot of whom are really mad about tomorrow’s return to Stage 2 restrictions. (One wonders how certain anti-vaxxer members of the premier’s family took the news.) So here’s Doug’s latest projection of strength: a decisive walk-and-talk through a big hallway that looks an awful lot like the Season 3 key art for Succession that’s been gracing billboards and bus shelters for the last few weeks.

Doug Ford tries to look stately and in command like Logan Roy on Succession
Twitter: @fordnation

You see it, right? People in suits, and also Rod Phillips, striding with authority towards the camera, projecting power and intent. Important things are being discussed. People are making gestures. Zoom in a little and you’ll notice that Doug’s looking straight into the camera, as are several other people in the frame. Photo ops are serious business; they prove the premier didn’t go back into hiding after the embarrassment of yesterday’s press conference!

Elsewhere on Twitter, NOW editor Radheyan Simonpillai noticed Doug went to the trouble of switching out the blue surgical mask he’s seen wearing in other photos snapped at that appearance for a more serious-minded, colour-coordinated black one. Totally normal thing to do when you’re breathlessly racing from one emergency to the next.

There’s another downside to Doug Ford aping Succession, of course, and it’s a little less funny. I will bet you a Tim Hortons egg sandwich that Doug Ford does not watch Succession, because if he did he would know that Jesse Armstrong’s show is a Shakespearean tragicomedy about the foolish, pampered adult children of a wealthy monster, and the jockeying among them to succeed him as the CEO of their company.

It’s King Lear but everyone’s an asshole, and the show is ultimately about how entitled fools will abandon every last shred of their dignity to please a father who is incapable of loving them. And even though self-awareness is decidedly not a Ford family trait, I’m pretty sure Douglas Ford Jr. would see Succession as the stuff of nightmares rather than a fun night’s entertainment.

Then again, for all I know he loves the show. Maybe he discovered it over the holiday break, snowed in at the cottage with nothing else to do. Maybe binge-watching Succession was the reason he failed to act against the Omicron variant, and the reason his ministers and staff had to scramble to put together the plan he claimed to have approved “in 30 seconds” yesterday.

Anyway, bottom line: this morning, Doug Ford dressed up as Logan Roy, master of the universe, captain of industry, lord of the expletive. But let’s be real: if he’s anybody on Succession, it’s Connor, the hapless eldest son who spent most of the season 2 in a doomed political bid. Screw that guy.

@normwilner

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.