According to the Globe:
The Globe spoke to more than a dozen people who attended the gala and contacted everyone on its organizing committee, though only a handful returned telephone calls. Six members of the Garrison Ball’s 13-person organizing committee released a statement Tuesday, saying none of them asked the mayor to leave.A CBC report confirmed that no member of the Gala's organizing committee asked Ford to leave the event and denies that Councillor Ainslie told anyone to remove Ford:
Defence Minister Peter MacKay, who was at the gala, said he chatted with Mayor Ford briefly. “He looked fine to me,” Mr. MacKay wrote in an e-mail.
Former budget chair Mike Del Grande, who in that post was one of Mayor Ford’s most loyal supporters, characterized Mr. Ainslie’s comments as “sour grapes” because Mr. Ainslie did not receive the budget chair position he had coveted earlier this year.
..the Garrison Ball's volunteer organizing committee said in an email statement to CBC News on Tuesday that they did not ask Ford to leave the Feb. 23 event.
"No member of the event’s organizing committee, including Councillor Paul Ainslie, directed the mayor to leave the event that night," the email said.The Toronto Star has lied about Rob Ford in the past. I was interviewing Ford during his 2010 mayoral campaign on the day a Toronto Star story was published alleging that Ford had assaulted a high school football player he was coaching. Ford had to interrupt the interview a number of times to take calls from staff and supporters who were trying to locate the player so he could set the record straight. Either Ford was telling the truth, or he is the best actor I've ever met, and I've worked on movies where the lead actors were nominated for and/or won an Academy Award.
In the end, the player, who disliked Ford, refuted the Star's account, though the left-wing newspaper stubbornly refused to apologize for its lies.
The Star has fanatically opposed Ford before and since his election victory. It did so to the point where more than one Star columnist not only insinuated, but outright declared that Torontonians must be "nuts" because they supported the cost-cutting municipal politician.
Rob Ford's success is alarming to the Star for a variety of reasons. They include that Ford is an opponent of the Star's special interest allies. Ford's popularity is like a slap in the face to the Star's editorial board, serving as a daily reminder that they are irrelevant to political opinion in the city in any substantive way. Something The Star's propagandists should realize by now is that when it comes to his electability, no one cares what they say about Ford. It doesn't matter if he is drunk, grabbed the rear-end of an attention-seeking social climber, gave the finger to an obnoxious driver or whatever.
The people who support Ford do so because, unlike the politicians the Star favors, he doesn't spend other people's money like a drunken sailor. He has kept taxes and spending down and fought the predatory public unions to the point where they have accepted contracts the city can afford.
The Star's vendetta of hysteria, smears, lies, insults and mudslinging only solidifies support for the beleaguered mayor. At this point, Toronto's largest circulation daily's credibility about the city's mayor is no better than Pravda's reports about America were during the Soviet era or Iran's Press TV reports are about its enemies Canada and Israel.
So bring it on al Starzeera. Every time you pick a battle with Ford, he gets stronger and you look more desperate and ridiculous.
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(in the video below, at an event yesterday held at City Hall to honor legendary Canadian boxer George Chuvalo, the Toronto Star reporter acts like a no-class jerk, harassing not only Ford, but Chuvalo with questions about Ford's "drinking")
UPDATE: Chrisie Blatchford's column on the Toronto Star acting like despicable high school bullies who think they're in a 'cool clique'
4 comments:
Umm, didn't your first post about the Thomson story include the following: "Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has a bit of a history of getting wasted," and "Last night at a party for the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, it seems our mayor hit the bar a time too many..and got stupid"?
Your words, not mine.
And there was that 2005 incident at the Leafs game. Oh, and wasn't he popped for a DUI in Florida? And didn't he originally lie about both? I'm not even going to go into into detail about the endless 911 calls to his house, which I'm willing to bet are the result of a combination of drunkenness and mental instability in that home.
But yes, it's always the Star's fault, and never Etobicoke Slim's.
Is there anything that you're not willing to explain away about Boy Rob? And why is it that I doubt that you'd extend that courtesey to a liberal politician?
Look, I pride myself in being the most fucked-up person in the room. Christ, I'm on my third bourbon at 11 am. But it doesn't hurt my job or damage those that ally themselves with me. That's decidedly not the case with Ford.
The guy is enormously embarrassing and his economic policies are a fucking mess, often in direct contradiction with his own campaign promises.
And make no mistake, he's not that popular. He won because the left and the centre couldn't get their shit in one sock. And it'll likely happen again, except if Olivia Chow bigfoots everyone else out of 2014.
That should terrify you as much as it does me, but I suspect it doesn't.
Yeah Skippy, I indeed wrote those things ..and I'm not going to go back and change them just so I can deny them! But there's a difference between getting wasted off the clock, back in the old days and doing a job as mayor.
And as it turned out, it looked like I was wrong. It's no secret that Ford is overweight - who's to say his behaviour isn't due to diabetes and low blood sugar.
At the end of the day Ford has flatlined city spending and name the last mayor to do that. Anywhere.
In any case, you're right, I'm not worried about Olivia - because when it comes to an actual campaign, I don't think she can win. I've met her and she's a lovely lady but a terrible politician. There aren't too many ridings outside the downtown core where she'd have a shot.
I'm not so sure about that. There are some heavily Chinese wards out there, particularly in the northern end of the city. Combine those with the downtown core, and there's cause for worry.
A writer from the Toronto Star spreading lies about someone? I'd never have expected that to happen...
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