Don’t be a hater – just because you’re a George fan, and he didn’t win.

National Post columnist Kelly McParland treated us to a morning laugh today with the following satire on the Ford/Smitherman split.

Sarcasm, cynicisym, and wit.  I love it!

“LATTE FUTURES PLUMMET AS TORONTO CONTEMPLATES FORD MAYORALTY”

By: Kelly McParland

National Post
October 27th, 2010
Across Toronto this morning bleary-eyed residents grabbed their two-wheelers and cycled to Starbucks, ordered up a stiff frappuccino — what the hell, make it 2% milk, I’ll need it — and surveyed the damage.

It couldn’t be true. Rob Ford, Mr. Double-Double, a guy who never met a cruller he didn’t like, had pulled it off. The man got himself elected mayor. All those angry suburbanites, the ones who were supposed to complain a lot but skip the actual process of voting, had turned up en masse and put the guy in office.

For Toronto’s urban sophisticates, it was a wipe-out. Total repudiation. Worse than the time they ran out of well-oaked chardonnay at Vintages. What are they supposed to do now, move to Calgary? Buy a leaf blower, for Chrissake? Any day now they’ll be erecting barriers at Pusateri’s, checking IDs. No one gets in without a credit card from Home Depot.

Wearily they munched their almond biscottis and totted up the devastation. Someone would have to contact the holistic, non-profit communal bike-sharing project and warn them the grand opening, scheduled for January, would be delayed.

Expansion  of the rooftop lawn at City Hall would have to be put on ice, construction of the solar-powered arboretum delayed, shipments of biodegradable, non-toxic, soy-based weed control returned to the dealer. Oh, just keep the bloody deposit. Might as well just buy some mums at Costco and stick them in the lobby, like they do in Mississauga where that … woman… was re-elected once again. How old is she now, 300? She’ll be more insufferable than ever, demanding we show up at some shopping mall and help co-ordinate bus routes.  Hazel dear, we don’t want your buses co-ordinating with ours, we want your people to stay home on weekends.

All across the city the scene at Starbucks was being repeated. The man in charge of closing the main access highways every weekend for kite-flying festivals and g0-cart races was checking the want ads for  job openings.  Classes were cancelled at the new Streetcar Drivers’ Training Centre, where they’d been practising how to arrive at stops in bunches of three or four at a time, twenty minutes behind schedule, without bumping into one another. There were nothing but sad faces at the Toronto Works yard, where they’d been busy digging up roads for seven years — the same ones, over and over — and now face the prospect of putting them all back together so people can actually drive on them.

David Miller’s SUV driver, who knew to keep the motor running while the mayor made his annual Earth Day speech, was devastated. So were the taxi drivers outside TTC headquarters, who stand to lose all that business from commissioners taking cabs across town to discuss improving the transit system. Up in the planning department, where they’d been figuring out when to break the news of yet another fare hike so they could build themselves a new headquarters, gloom was everywhere. What’s the point of working for the public transit system if you can’t borrow money to build yourself a new office, conveniently near the highway and with plenty of free parking?

Speaking of devastation, what about plans for the new four-story hockey rink down near the waterfront, the one the old council wanted to build even though it would cost $88 million and they only had $34 million to pay for it? Don’t even ask. You think Rob Ford’s going to agree to borrow an extra $54 million for a rink where the Zambonis have to travel by elevator, just because it would be prettier than the alternative? Give up sweetheart. You ever see Rob Ford? You think he plays hockey?

Nope, it was just an ugly day all-round in poor old Toronto. The wailing was so loud it woke the ticket-takers on the Bloor subway line. Food inspectors, accustomed to easy overtime from weekends spent harrassing hot dog vendors, contemplated the loss of income. Things were so bad at Queers Against Israeli Apartheid they couldn’t even summon the courage to blame the Jews.

Oh, and that reminds me … You know that application form for next year’s grant money? Might as well recycle it now dear, while they’re still collecting the blue boxes.