Pubdate: Sat, 18 May 2013
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2013 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Christie Blatchford

NEITHER CROOK NOR CHEAT, BUT FORD MUST GO

Look - Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is not venal, malevolent or a
cheat.

That said, just the sound of his name now makes me want to lie down
with a cold cloth on my brow.

It's time for him to go, somewhere, anywhere - his beloved cottage
perhaps, for a good long think before he comes out with the cold hard
truth, whatever the heck it is.

A leave of absence, if required, would not be out of line, and even
his most unpleasant and ambitious opponents on city council and in the
press would be forced to play nice about that.

Stepping down, even if only until the next election, to get his
personal life in some semblance of order might be best.

But at the very least, if he does nothing else, the mayor has to do a
whole lot more than mutter "Ridiculous," blame the Toronto Star and
then vanish into the first long weekend of the summer, as though he
were leaving behind nothing more serious than that nasty video of him
dashing into a KFC during his much ballyhooed "Cut the Waist" diet.

What Ford faces now is an allegation that sometime during the past six
months, while in the company of some lovely drug dealers from the
Toronto neighbourhood of Rexdale, he smoked crack cocaine, and that
the whole business was captured on what is described as unusually
good-quality cellphone video.

The story first broke Thursday night on Gawker, a website whose motto
is, "Today's gossip is tomorrow's news."

If that isn't encouraging, the story written by one John Cook is damn
interesting.

He got a tip last week from someone looking to sell a video of Ford
smoking crack. The tipster provided a tantalizing photo of the mayor
with three "young gentlemen," in Cook's clever words, one of whom
unfortunately turned up dead in late March, a homicide victim.

Cook travelled to Toronto, met his tipster, and in turn the seller,
and finally saw the video while in the back of a car parked outside a
housing project in the Etobicoke area of Toronto.

According to Cook, what it shows is unmistakably Rob Ford, sitting
with a clear glass pipe in one hand and a lighter in the other,
awkwardly trying to light the pipe. When he finally does, he inhales.

As it turns out, the Toronto Star investigative team of Kevin Donovan
and Robyn Doolittle also saw what appears to have been the same video,
also from the back of a car, on May 3. The reporters saw it three
times and concluded it was Ford.

Their report, on Friday's front page, added considerable detail to
Cook's.

The men shopping it around are Somali drug dealers.

They want "six figures" for it. The two who claim ownership want to
move to Calgary (lucky Calgary). They appear to be simple
entrepreneurs.

It is the tipster (this is according to Cook) who seems to want the
video out because the mayor needs to be held to account.

The person who actually shot the video claims to be the mayor's
dealer.

The video, say the Star reporters who saw it, ends with the ringing of
a cell; its ring tone is a song, which appeared to startle Ford, whose
eyes open a bit.

"That phone better not be on," he said.

It is a staggering, astonishing story.

In the modern jargon, he is deemed "authentic," the guy with whom you
could imagine having a beer.

His supporters weren't surprised whenever he was a bit of a doofus.
They couldn't have been shocked when he got loud and stupid at a Leafs
game (though they might have wondered why the hell he lied about it
first), or even to learn he was once charged with a DUI while on
vacation in Florida.

He was who he was - a round, pink, self-conscious, shy, sweaty guy,
the very antithesis of this city's natural governing class.

Their number is legion but think lawyer Clay Ruby, former mayor David
Miller, councillor Adam Vaughan and you get the idea.

Ford was always going to be the fat girl shlepping around Holt's in
vain, wondering where the big sizes are kept.

He was a figure of scorn from the get-go, even before he won the
mayoralty.

Only a Torontonian would understand the classism in this, but it was
enough to say, "He's from Etobicoke, for Christ's sakes."

But crack was never part of the deal.

I speak as someone, perhaps the only one person left in Toronto who
will still admit it, who voted for him.

He had a noble goal - stop the gravy train, by which I always took to
mean the unholy alliance of labour, bloated bureaucracy and political
machinery at Toronto City Hall - but in the viper's nest of that
place, he could never locate the gravy with precision and couldn't
keep up with the train.

He managed a few wins - contracting out garbage service was one - but
the sense I always had was of a guy running behind the train as it
left the station.

He cannot leave his loyal and decent deputy mayor, Doug Holyday, to
handle this ghastly mess, as he did Friday.

He owes his "base," a dreadful word meant to describe his most ardent
supporters, a serious explanation - either of how he became the guy
with whom they might want to share a crack pipe, or why that isn't so.
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MAP posted-by: Matt