Rob Ford Crack-o-Meter: the crack video owners are fed up and Ford’s office becomes a tourist attraction
Rob Ford has skated through some humiliating situations and emerged relatively unscathed. The crack-smoking scandal, though, has ratcheted the ridiculousity to new highs. Every day brings more bad news. So far, Ford has kept his cool (more or less), but we have to wonder if—or when—he’s going to crack. Here, our daily assessment of what’s going on with our infamous mayor.
• Gawker’s go-between tells the site that the video is “gone” (Pressure: ↓) And Gawker is blaming everyone from CNN and the Toronto Star to the local Somali community for messing up the deal.
• The rest of Canada is laughing at Toronto (↑) Councillor Adam Vaughan complains that every session at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Conference in Vancouver this weekend opened with a joke about the scandal. “You’re used to Toronto being made fun of with the Leafs and the whole bit,” Vaughan says, “but it was a little much at times.”
• Rob Ford’s office is now a “disaster tourism” attraction (↑) Two visiting Albertans nix the CN Tower in favour of checking out Ford’s office at city hall.
• Ford’s staff is back to its pre-crack allegations size (↓) Though the six new staffers have significantly less experience that the ones who left. His latest hire: Dan Jacobs, the part-time Newstalk 1010 employee who produced the Ford brothers’ weekly show. Jacobs’s CV also includes stints as a lifeguard and owner of a DJ company.
• The Internet gets a new excuse to poke fun at Ford for his weight (↑) A German newspaper headline calls him “des Crack-Bürgermeister,” Bürgermeister means “mayor” in German, but the online quippers don’t seem to care.
Crack Threat Level: LOW
(Images: Rob Ford, Christopher Drost; meter, Scott Akermann)
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