Hazlitt Originals

The maelstrom that is Lance Armstrong Inc. teaches us how power, backed by money and self-righteousness, can be a force of almost unlimited destruction. The cyclist's story isn't just about the greatest doping conspiracy in sports—it's about the nature of corruption.

We have become obsessed by food: where it comes from, where to buy it, how to cook it and—most absurdly of all—how to eat it. When did the basic human imperative to feed ourselves mutate into such a multitude of anxieties about provenance, ethics, health, lifestyle and class status?

In many ways, Rob Ford is a study in absences. He came into office looking like a man who would galvanize the city. He promised to stage a winner-takes-all battle between city and suburb, a grand contest of ideas between socialists and conservatives. As it turned out, he wasn’t so much with the ideas. He seems forever stuck at half-a-Dale Carnegie: he can make friends, but not influence people.

Good mayors and bad mayors and goofy mayors have come before. But few have the same hypnotic appeal. Rob Ford complains there is a media conspiracy out to get him. More probably, the media realizes there’s something about this man that keeps people from looking away. The author of our latest Hazlitt Original, The Gift of Ford, explains the many attractions of Toronto's mayor.