Toronto Star city hall reporter Robyn Doolittle joined Jon Stewart on the Daily Show in New York City Thursday night to promote her new book, Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story.

Rob Ford became the centre of jokes on the American late-night comedy show circuit in November where he was dubbed the crack-smoking mayor of Toronto, including on the Daily Show.

During Thursday night’s interview Stewart expressed surprise that the Ford story took so long to come out.

“So there’s rumours of domestic abuse, drugs, and absenteeism. And everyone waited a year (to report),” Stewart said.

“How does he get away with this?” he asked haltingly.

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Doolittle pointed out the difficulty of confirming information with the police and the many issues with following up on reports of the mayor’s behaviour.

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Stewart joked that Toronto’s mayor is “an entire season of a Cops episode,” referring to the long-running American reality show and laughed when Doolittle pointed out that the Fords think of themselves as “the Canadian Kennedys.”

“For real,” she said. “That’s chapter two.”

As the laughter subsided, Stewart delved into more serious matters.

“People are willing to overlook all of this other stuff because they feel heard,” she said to Stewart.

“This man is going to die, and probably relatively soon,” he said adding that Ford’s disqualifying factor is, for him, the fact that he refuses to get help.

Explaining the allure of Rob Ford, Doolittle said that Ford made his name by returning phone calls, and taking a personal interest in constituents’ issues.

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