One day, the Shirtless Jogger will be immortalized on a stamp.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n While out for a run on Canada Day, Joe Killoran came across Toronto Mayor Rob Ford (fresh from an apparently combative two month stint in rehab) and his entourage stomping about Toronto looking for votes. Killoran, who looks a little bit like Zeus or one of those Spartans in the movie 300, began, in an admirably articulate state of rage, to scream at Ford. \u201cYes,\u201d we collectively said, \u201cthese are my words manifest in the pleasing form of a man!\u201d The Ford brothers, normally masters of physical intimidation and the death stare, shrivelled up in Killoran\u2019s presence.<\/p>\n Killoran, stripped to the waist, looked like the truth. Radiating a masculine power that seemed fueled by the archetypes of the 1970\u2019s, Killoran was our single-combat hero. He was what we wanted to see in the mirror, saying what we wanted to say. In short, he was the ideal proxy, and Rob Ford, the actual proxy of Toronto, was it\u2019s pale and receding antithesis.<\/p>\n The irony is that Rob Ford\u2019s narrative positions the Mayor as Toronto\u2019s Everyman. He\u2019s just a regular Joe, a guy who likes helping out the common folk, hates the high-minded, mocking elites and struggles with the same sort of demons that we all do at the end of hard-working day. Ambushed so vividly by an actual regular Joe, the myth was laid bare. Ford, the man who stakes his brand on his ability to connect, his ability to be real, man, was a paper tiger, a bully stripped raw by the confrontation that stood unblinking before him.<\/p>\n