Discussion for article #247703
Rest In peace.
He seemed to perfectly capture the axiom, “It’s better to burn out, then to fade away.”
He was definitely a strange specimen of the human species, but this is sad. 46 is too young.
I’ve lost enough friends and family myself, all of them flawed and imperfect, to not be pensive for a moment when a human life is cut short. De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
There will be all kinds of sympathy heaped on Ford, but let’s keep in mind:
He was a terrible mayor and a horrible, petty human being.
I acknowledge his family is grieving but truly I think between his violent tendencies and his wife’s reported substance abuse, his kids are better off without either of them.
Call me a flawed human being, but I’d be willing to make an exception to that for Dick Cheney.
For the suffering he caused, I think you get a pass on that. Me, I was grimly pleased when they zapped Bin Laden. SOB had it coming and I was glad to hear the news. Said so, too.
He was corrupt and incompetent, but he was never dull.
Actually there’s no evidence he was corrupt, though he was incompetent almost beyond belief. His life and career in politics were a bumbling attempt to live up to the legacy left by his far more successful (and intellectually-gifted) father. Actually the parallels with Donald Trump are uncanny, right down to the way every scandalous thing he said or did further endeared him to his fans, as evidence of some sort of truth-telling badassdom.
Wherever he is now, hopefully he can get a break from his personal demons.
A loved one of mine died from the exact same disease at approximately the same age over the same amount of time. He was treated at one of the nation’s most elite cancer clinics, and the best they could do for him was a chemo drug that had been around for 20 years. That was 15 years ago, and it appears the same amount of progress - zero - has been made in fighting this brutal devastating disease.
I can’t help but wonder if diseases that are the worst of the worst - death sentences at the time of diagnosis - get less attention in medical research because the prospect of incremental improvement seems less worth it. As in, your odds are so bad, why waste time and money trying to improve your odds a little bit.
So it goes. Rest in peace.
Sad no matter how you slice it - he was a man caught in a family and a situation he didn’t deserve, and it destroyed him. He legitimately meant well. That’s better than you can say for most people.
So Canada did have its own Donald Trump, in a way.
Well at least he lived fast and died young. Rest in Power.