UPDATE: The Mayor of Toronto seems to be undergoing one of the most spectacular, drawn out, mental breakdowns in the history of public officialdom. At a fraught meeting of the city council, he charged across the council floor like a lunatic, half knocking over a female councilor. He appeared to be trying to get past her to go scrap with someone else.
Here in Ireland we pride ourselves on our colourful politicians, but we have nothing, NOTHING on the scale of the astonishing mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford.
The politician/high school football coach has been involved in incidents that make Charlie Haughey's career look dull and serene. The man makes Silvio Berlusconi look like a boring old man. Some of the things Ford is accused of doing include:
- Smoking crack cocaine while in office
- Threatening to kill someone in a video released on youtube (below)
- Racially abusing the taxi driver from the Middle East
- Calling aides "Liberal bitches"
- Getting a bus to deviate from its route and dump the passengers on the side of the road so it could collect his high school football team.
- Telling a female staffer he wanted to give her oral sex
I said SMOKING CRACK COCAINE
A video surfaced of him threatening to kill those who have made allegations that he and his brothers are thieves and liars. He has acknowledged he was under the influence of crack and alcohol in the video. Referring to his accuser, Ford declared that he wanted to "kill that motherfucker", expressing a desire to "rip his throat out" and "poke his eyes out" (he did not specify the order in which he wished to do this). At the close of video, in a moment of touching self-reflection, he declared himself to be "one sick motherfucker". See video below. He has previously admitted to buying crack cocaine and he has since been forced to deny that his residence is a crack den.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paOSI0WQ13k
The St. Patrick's Day Massacre
Ford enjoyed St. Patrick's Day last year too much. Even those who've spent a Patrick's Day licking vomit of the cobblestones of Temple Bar would be agog at the conduct of Ford during last March. It would take a decent-sized book in itself to go through in detail all that Ford got up to on the evening in question, but witnesses have accused him of, among other things, racially abusing a taxi driver from the Middle East, snorting cocaine in a restaurant, gulping down a dose of oxycontin, partying with alleged prostitutes, putting away an obscene amount of vodka, calling a few of his aides "liberal bitches" and telling Olivia Godnek, a female staffer, "I banged your pussy" and solemnly vowing to "eat you out."
Ford today denied that the woman he hung around with on St. Patrick's Day was a prostitute, declaring that the woman in question, Alana, was a friends of his. He added piously that it "hurt his wife" when the prostitute allegation was thrown out. He also denied that he told staffer Olivia Godnak that he "wanted to eat her pussy", saying he was happily married, noting that he had "more than enough to eat at home." This too, hurt his wife. He announced he was taking legal action against some of the journalists who had printed the allegations. Listen below.
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Football Career
His father paid for the young Rob to have trials with the Washington Redskins and Notre Dame University, both of which led nowhere. This video below at the reasoning behind the Redskins rejection of the future Mayor.
Falling arse over head is never the most elegant of activities but Ford's effort here made Mary Decker's Zola Budd aided fall in the 1984 Olympic final look remarkably graceful in comparison.
Diverting the bus
Following the collapse of his early dreams to become a pro-footballer, he has thrown himself into football coaching in a big way, looking after the Don Bosco Eagles high school team. He wasted no expense in looking after his boys. Last year, after a fraught game which almost ended in a brawl between a coach and the referee, finished earlier than expected, Ford and his team looked set to have to wait around for 40 minutes waiting for the scheduled school bus to pick them up.
The Mayor of Toronto wasn't having it.
He got onto the head of the TTC (The Toronto bus service people) telling him he wanted a bus to pick up his team as soon as possible. The busy 36 Finch West bus broke off its normal route answered the call. But not before asking all the people on the bus to get off so leaving them stranded on the side of the road. Having done this, the bus was free to shoot off and collect Ford's football team.
Naturally, it was raining at the time.
Ford's future
This evening, Ford apologised for his earlier comments.
While he failed to make the grade as an American footballer, he has sought to ape the lifestyle of some of football's more notorious hellraisers. Most impressively of all, he has sought to combine this lifestyle with his role as democratically-elected mayor of Toronto, an unenviable task.
Ford was elected mayor, beating out the favourite, an openly gay former cabinet minister George Smitherman. Ford remains a prime example of what might be called the Silvio Berlusconi phenomenon, an electorally successful politician who, nonetheless, no one wants to admit having voted for.
The city council have recommended he step down by a modest majority of 41-2.
He is refusing to go.
He will not be moved.
