Rob Ford Crack-o-Meter: the crack video owners are fed up and Ford’s office becomes a tourist attraction
• 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)