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'
