#6dad

The 6Dad is having a rough go of it lately. Since voting against designating Toronto a sanctuary city in 2014 and more recently voting to cut funding for homeless shelters, @norm’s brand has seemed increasingly out of touch with the actual problems that the city faces. As he continues to push his (stupid) clothing line, criticism has been mounting for the world’s most unlikely celebrity.

And lately Twitter has become an increasingly thorny and unwelcoming place for the ‘favourite son of Mrs. Kelly.’ In response, he’s taken to swinging his banhammer more liberally than usual as users continue to point out that his love for Toronto is more brand than substance. Lately, the boilerplate reply to just about anything he tweets is to ask “why do you hate homeless people?”

As you can imagine, this is not a question @norm has an especially good answer for, and he has taken to banning some of his critics:

Norm Kelly is an odd internet celebrity, insofar as being a big fan more or less requires you to ignore the way he does his job. It is hard to be a fan of both Councillor Norm Kelly and @norm, because the former makes the latter seem ingratiating. @norm is a curious, if dated, internet meme who is memorable because of the inherent irony in an old white dude inserting himself into Black culture. On the other hand there’s Councillor Kelly: a mysteriously still-employed politician who denies that climate change is real and has proclaimed to City Council that he thinks bike lanes will be replaced with hover lanes in 20 years.