Activist Communique: Toronto – the Big Smoke’s Mayor is a Big Crack Smoking Joke
I thought I had heard it all when I survived Mel Lastman as being mayor of Toronto.
For those of you that don’t remember, he was Toronto’s post-amalgamation mayor from 1998 to 2003, until he was eventually defeated by “clean sweep” David Miller.
At the time, I thought “NOOOBODY” could beat the ridiculous mouth of Mayor Lastman:
How he mistook the Hell’s Angels as real angels.
How he was afraid to tour Africa because he feared cannibals would put his family in a pot of boiling oil.
Yup, that was our mayor. Some laughed. Some cringed. Other cities laughed as we cringed.
It seems as though, as a story broke by Gawker Magazine Thursday afternoon, that Mel Lastman’s public record of absurdity and public embarrassment might be outdone.
Outdone by our current mayor Rob Ford – who seems to be caught smoking crack cocaine (I’m not joking scandal); news which has slowly, car crashed into the weekend news cycle.
The story was first broken by Gawker and then picked up by the Toronto Star who had two of its reporters watch the roughly 90 second video where it appears that Rob Ford is smoking a crack pipe.
Both Kevin Donovan and Robin DooLittle of the Star got to watch the video a total of three times – the owners of the video, described as “drug dealers” are still shopping around the video for a cool one million (can be negotiated down) with Gawker trying to fundraise for possession of the cell-phone recorded flick.
The timeline for the video is roughly in the lasy six months ago, on top of when our major was already under public scrutiny for public intoxication and past unruly behaviour while drunk at a hockey game.
Apparently, according to the two Toronto Star reported, they watched the cellphone video in the backseat of a vehicle at a strip-mall.
From their account,
“In the back of the car that night, we had absolutely no way to authenticate the video. What follows is an account of a video showing a man who appeared to be Mayor Rob Ford, to the best of our ability to identify him. He was sitting in a chair, speaking in an incoherent and rambling manner, smoking what looks exactly like a crack pipe.”
On video he also laments poetically in slurred speech about being a “right-winger” and says, “Justin Trudeau is a fag.”
The clip ends when Mayor Ford is startled by a cellphone ringtone and questions if the cell phone pointed at him was on, which it obviously was since it was recording.
On Friday, the mayor would only comment that the accusation of his crack pipe smoking were, “ridiculous” but it seems the city and city councillors are demanding answers. The Ford Brothers have cancelled their usual Sunday radio talk show.
It should be remembered that this isn’t the first time Mayor Rob Ford has been in that spotlight for alcohol or drug driven follies.
According to New York Magazine,
“In 1999, as a 29-year-old who had yet to enter public office, Ford was charged in Florida with DUI and marijuana possession (although the marijuana charge was dropped). When the arrest came to light during Ford’s run for mayor in 2010, Ford lied and claimed he had merely been charged with failing to take a breathalyzer test, not a DUI. Lying about easily disproven things would become a Ford trademark. ”
And…
“In 2006, Ford, then a city councilor, was thrown out of a Maple Leafs hockey game for getting into drunken, expletive-laden arguments with fans (and also calling them “communists”). Asked about the incident by a reporter, Ford claimed he “wasn’t even at the game.” A few weeks later, he admitted that he was, in fact, at the game. “I had one too many beers and I sincerely apologize,” he said. ”
And…
“In June of 2010, Ford was recorded on a phone call telling a constituent that he would try to score some OxyContin for him.”
For a full list, please see here: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/05/rob-ford-crack-video-toronto-mayor.html
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