Cartoonist Chip Zdarsky Runs Wonderfully Absurd Campaign for Mayor of Toronto
When the Terminator can govern California, when a professional wrestler can lord over Minnesota, and when B-list film star Ronald Reagan can rule the world, who's to say a comic book artist can't be Mayor of Toronto? That's what National Post "Bad Advice" cartoonist Steve Murray is asking in his just launched bid for mayor of the largest city in Canada.
Better known as Chip Zdarsky and as the author of "Prison Funnies" and a reliably hilarious (if unspeakably vulgar) Twitter feed, Murray's curiously named "M4M" campaign was born out of that which has made so many great leaders: tax outrage.
From Murray's website:
[Murray's] quest to become the mayor began on a hot, summer day in July, as he was sipping a latté in a downtown café while snacking on a butter cup and jotting down another classic column on his MacBook Pro. He gestured to the proprietor to put his remaining bits of butter tart in a plastic bag for easy transport (paper itches Steve's skin), but the proprietor morphed into a panhandler before his very eyes, requesting a nickle for the "plastic bag tax." Steve's jaw dropped and his muscles tightened, ready to fight this man to his death. But instead of throwing a classic Murray Haymaker, Steve realized he had to do something bigger, grander, legal. He vowed that day to march down to City Hall and throw his hat in the ring for mayor, since nobody else had his kind of righteous anger, without the distraction of high school football or billion-dollar boondoggles.
With respect to real solutions to imagined problems, Murray's website claims to be updated "every few seconds" with new ideas of from "Steve's constantly evolving vision." Chief among them may be Murray's firm position on Toronto's garbage administration. Displeased with sitting Mayor David Miller's handling of a recent garbage strike, Murray's pledged to take stronger action should the forces of the garbage workers union threaten Toronto's sanitation for a second time:
Of course, with Steve "Intimidator" Murray in charge, the unions would have asked for almost nothing out of sheer terror, and I would have given it to them, like chicken bones to a pack of slow-moving dogs.
If the union, for even a second, didn't do exactly what I wanted from them, well, we would just go with somebody who did and privatize the whole shebang. Now, I don't want to brag or anything, but I know a guy who can take our garbage away for, like, half the price we're paying now: Gary & Sons. What's their secret? I'm not entirely sure and Gary keeps telling me that I should stop asking, and I take Gary at his word because he was the best man at my first wedding. The fact is, he can do it.
While his proposals and campaign materials may seem extreme or perhaps even imbecilic, Steve Murray has earned ComicsAlliance's coveted endorsement for Mayor of Toronto. True, beyond his having missed the deadline for registration, Murray appears is grossly unqualified for even the most inconsequential of municipal responsibilities, but it remains true that he is the most eminently qualified comic book-related individual to pursue the office of the Mayor.
Murrary also cares about Toronto's greatest natural resource: Its children. Why, he's even tackled the issue of the comic book industry's need for more kid-friendly material by reaching out to young, Torontonians in his website's Kids Korner.
Press inquires to Mr. Murray were not made.