For fucks sake, Canada, what the hell is going on up there? I mean, we looked up to you as the good North American country, a place of refuge for conscientious objectors and socialized medicine, and now, what with the crack-smoking, the attacks on free media, the high school dropout as the Minister of Education, and wholesale selling of the country’s natural resources to oil and mining interests, it’s like you’ve chosen Silvio Berlusconi, or a Palin as your leader.
Toronto is no Wasllia It is the fifth-biggest municipality in North America and Canada’s biggest and most influential city. It seems that the day of reckoning is coming for the mayor of that fair city. Rob Ford, the type of chimeric conservative populist who could wring electoral reward out of gaffes and controversies, has been beloved in that Chris Christie way – of the barbaric, loud, aggressive style. Ford’s run as a politician on the international stage has always been absurdist – his insistence that women who contract HIV must be sleeping with bisexual men, and the infamous 2006 Maple Leafs Game, where Ford launched into a drunken tirade at a young couple. Ford initially denied ever being at the game, but eventually apologized. Then there is his inability to perform a 5-step drop without falling over like a comedy-relief in a slapstick movie, Rob Ford always seemed a little too good (or bad) to be true.
At the toney Toronto Garrison Ball, a gala celebrating the Canadian armed forces, people in attendance noticed that the mayor seemed impaired. According to interviews, he was “incoherent,” “stumbling,” “rambling,” “intoxicated,” “slurring,” “seemed to be drunk,” “was nervous, excited, sweaty, out of it.” Military guests were offended at the mayor’s behavior, according to guests interviewed by the Star. “It felt disrespectful to the event,” said one organizer. Mayor Rob Ford was asked to leave.
Sarah Thomson, a Toronto businesswoman and former mayoral candidate, created a media storm when she accused Ford of groping her while acting “out of it” at a Jewish political group’s event. Ford arrived late to the cocktail and dinner event. He was speaking in a rambling, incoherent manner that alarmed guests. Toronto Councillor Paul Ainslie, a strong Ford ally, confirmed to the Star that Ford was tossed out.
Ford had an impaired driving conviction in Florida in 1999. It’s an open secret at city hall that the mayor has battled alcohol abuse. Those closest to him are concerned for his health and the impact it has on his job as mayor of Canada’s largest city. Current and former staff have told the Star of repeated attempts to persuade the mayor to get help for more than two years and as recently as November. All attempts have been rebuffed.
Rob Ford is a product of upper-middle-class privilege who wanted for little growing up. He dreamed of becoming a pro football player, so his father sent him to a summer football camp—but not just any football camp. He was dispatched to the youth camp of the Washington Redskins, who had just won the 1983 Super Bowl. From there, it was on to South Bend, Indiana, and workouts at the legendary University of Notre Dame campus—an extravagant tour of gridiron nirvana beyond the wildest fantasies of your average North American teen.
Frighteningly, Rob Ford has two small children, a boy and a girl. His wife Renatta is an elusive figure who has fled reporters’ overtures, she has, however, made her presence felt through a series of 911 calls. The first one to make headlines summoned police to their home in late March 2008, resulting in an assault charge against Ford that was later withdrawn. The most recent came in on Christmas morning, when Renata’s mother phoned police from the mayor’s house to protest that he had been drinking and was threatening to take their children to Florida against his wife’s will. The entire Wild And Wonderful Ford Clan Of East Ontario is an epic of sleaze and self-righteous denials, and would make a pretty good cable teevee show. There’s the former (allegedly) hash-dealing brother, Doug, who is now on the Toronto City Council and one of his brother’s most vocal supporters. You have brother Randy, who was charged with assault and “forcible confinement” — that would be kidnapping — in a drug case years ago, and now tries not to be photographed.
Sister Kathy has “been linked to a number of bizarre, violent and sensational incidents,” such as palling around with white supremacists, having a drug-dealer boyfriend who (allegedly) “threaten[ed] to murder the mayor,” and a whole series of maybe-unwise relationship choices. In 1998, Sister Kathy, a recovering heroin addict, had a former common-law husband, Ennio Stirpe, who is also the father of her son. Stirpe arrived at the Kathy’s home and killed her new boyfriend with a sawed-off shotgun. Eleven years later, Stirpe had just gotten out of jail after serving two thirds of his manslaughter sentence, he knifed his girlfriend so savagely she was blinded in one eye. “Ford’s ex-in-law convicted in stabbing,” screamed one headline—an attempt to link the mayor to the attack that might have seemed unnecessarily sensationalist at the time. Then, within weeks, another incident in Kathy Ford’s turbulent love life brought patrol cars screeching to her brother’s doorstep.
Later that year, Ford and a small entourage headed to a private room in the Bier Markt on the Esplanade. On the way to the bar a fellow reveler, Jennifer Gordon, said she saw Ford “stumbling down the street” and she walked up to him. “He was inebriated and sweaty but in a jovial way,” Gordon recalled shortly after the incident. “Me being me, I said: ‘You’re the worst mayor ever.’” She said Ford walked over, kissed her on the forehead, and said: “I know, but I try.” The following morning, a senior Ford staff interviewed junior staff who were with Ford at the Bier Markt and asked tough questions about the mayor’s behavior. They were assured tha everything was under control. Inside the Bier Markt, according to restaurant staff and a Ford staffer, Ford and his small group went into a private room, intoxicated and were rambunctious. Ford was “incoherent” and “hammered.” At one point, Ford ventured onto the dance floor. The DJ who worked that night told the Dean Blundell radio show the mayor was fighting and carrying on “like an idiot.” He was asked to leave. A staffer said the mayor made another leap for the dance floor, then was escorted out by security.
But nothing could have prepared even Ford’s critics for the story first discussed by Gawker this past May: a cel phone video showing the magnificent douchebarge smoking crack in a Toronto housing development. The story provoked a conflicted response in the mainstream media, particularly the Toronto Star – after all these years, newspapers still struggle over whether and how to respond to stories broken under the looser ethical and legal standards employed by gossip- and rumor-oriented online publications.
Yesterday, Ford confessed to having smoked crack in the past, attributing the bad behavior to a drunken stupor – excusing one type of substance abuse through a reference to the more socially-permissible kind.
“Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. I am an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably about a year ago.”
Um, Mr Mayor? Yea, um, you know, if you’re truly in a drunken stupor that deep that you have to say “probably”, then you’re deeper in denial than you think.
These white, doughy, conservative types like to blame it on the devil sauce as they know their constituency. It’s not really their fault and we’ve all been there. The lack of personal responsibility for their actions is astonishing.
The story could get better, there are rumors of murder….but methinks the the Mayors coronary system may have a way of shutting this whole thing down.
Some classic shots:
