There came a point on Thursday afternoon – after learning that Rob Ford had taken some time off from an important city council meeting to wander around a parking lot sticking ‘Rob Ford’ magnets to cars – that I figured it would be time to update you lazy commoners about the ongoing saga that is Robbie’s intoxicated reign over the Kingdom of Toronto. Way back when, before the already infamous crack cocaine scandal of May 2013, the magnet controversy of 24 hours earlier in May 2013 didn’t seem so important. That is, of course, until Gawker (a celebrity gossip and crack-cocaine savvy web tabloid) broke the story that some guy, somewhere, has a video of King Robbie blazin’ crack tokes from a glass pipe – and the footage is for sale. Until someone buys it, you can always watch the Taiwanese CGI reenactment.
Gawker – who have decided that this is not an “alleged” or “supposed” crack smoking incident, given that they’ve got a graphic that reads “Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Smokes Crack” on their homepage – have caused a major firestorm for King Robbie the First in the City of Toronto. The Toronto Star, an ungrateful and petulant organisation that is hell-bent on taking down the Mayor, has viewed the tape “three times” but was clearly too cheap to buy it and stream it for the royal subjects of the Rob Ford empire aka The Birthplace of Kardinal Offishall. Plus, according to them, they saw this video on May 3rd. Why keep all this crack smoking mayhem a secret? And what kind of incompetent blackmail video salesman is behind this controversy? How can you mess up on monetising such a golden piece of footage? One must assume they’re ready to let it go at fire sale prices right now – hear that, Doug Ford?
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But, regardless, The Star claims they were shown the video – that allegedly shows Rob Ford raising a “lighter and [moving] it in a circle motion beneath the pipe” – by a “group of Somali men” who are “involved in the drug trade.” Apparently these upstanding gentlemen showed the Star their all-of-a-sudden infamous footage wherein Rob Ford allegedly calls Justin Trudeau a “fag,” audibly says, regarding the cell phone that was recording him, “that better not be on,” and allegedly refers to the players on his beloved high school football team (in a mumbly tone) as “just fucking minorities.” Since all this has broken, Rob Ford has denied it, but is probably angry at his buddy Don Cherry for foreshadowing this whole situation when he told a council meeting in 2010 to “put that in your pipe you left-wing kooks.” We know now that Don Cherry was probably referring to street drugs.
So this is all quite sad and lame, huh? What’s worse is that these drug dealing blackmailers – who have captivated the attention of the media very fucking quickly – also have a photo of Rob Ford chilling with (who many believe to be) a Toronto drug dealer who died during a gang-related shooting outside of a King St. W club. Now, I don’t really know what your background is, reader, but I do not encounter many crack dealing gangsters in my day-to-day life; because I generally avoid smoking crack. The fact that our King was hanging around crack dealers is a bit fucked up and suspicious – and that’s the beauty of it all.
If you could actually use your brain and flex your critical thinking muscle for a minute, you’d realise that Rob Ford is currently at the centre of the world’s most elaborate anti-drug campaign. Think about it, sheeple. What does a man with royal blood have to gain from such a bland position as Mayor of Toronto? A man with the intellectual pedigree of Rob Ford and the body of Chris Farley does not require the miserable salary and excruciating hours (which he does not keep, but, whatever) of a mayoral position to maintain his profile or accumulate wealth. This crack smokin’ hullabaloo is simply an example of performance art, in which we are all part of the audience.
Toronto evidently has a cocaine problem that Rob Ford is trying to expose. By planting himself in a room full of crack loving drug dealers – while some random dude films him on a cell phone and gets Robbie to say crazy, racist shit – Rob Ford has presented the planet with a POV look at what it’s really like to hoe your life out for a glass dick. We should be thankful that we all have such an excellent role model like Robbie, to show us what pathways to never, ever go down. Because that’s what a mayor is for! If anything, this is just an elaborate callback to the great comedian Marion Barry who Rob Ford is known to idolise*.
So don’t buy into the tabloid narrative that somehow it’s a bad thing to have a crack smoking mayor – who appears to be totally chill about being filmed while his lips are wrapped around the smoky nozzle of a crack pipe. Those people over at Gawker who are trying to make this into such a big deal, don’t know what they’re talking about – because they’re American. Here in Canada, we have much different standards for education, humour, and acceptable crack use in the political arena.
Or, maybe we don’t. Maybe King Robbie isn’t so infallible after all. It was all fun and games when he managed to get fired and come back from the dead, or when he was posing for crappy photos inside of sports cars he doesn’t own, but now the guy is being secretly filmed doing hard drugs in a sketchy apartment. Perhaps it’s not a joke after all. Maybe King Robbie needs help*.
*Safe assumption.
Follow Patrick on Twitter: @patrickmcguire
Previously – Rob Ford Has a Terrible Photographer