Well, we didn’t really expect a graceful response from Mayor Rob Ford to all the mounting evidence pointing to the reprobate lifestyle he leads, did we?

Set aside for the moment the alleged drug use. As it stands right now, we haven’t seen any direct proof of him using illegal narcotics and, even if we had, well, those of us in glass houses and such. Drug use is not my main concern here.

And, having not seen the video Police Chief Bill Blair yesterday confirmed exists, I’m even going to ignore the racist and homophobic blathering from the mayor that’s allegedly on it. That’s for another day.

At this point, it’s the seedy aspect of it all that is so eye-popping. A shock and disappointment, to paraphrase Blair’s reaction. The amount of time the mayor of this country’s largest city spent on drug transactions (or “constituency meetings” as he and his staff might refer to them) is astounding. In gas stations. At kids’ soccer games. On residential streets. Dark, secluded public spaces.

These weren’t just simply in passing hand-offs of money for product either. There’s His Worship, sitting in his SUV, swilling vodka and tossing his empties out into a school parking lot. Or him stepping out for a public piss. Last month when Sandro Lisi was first arrested, a neighbour, Carol Peck, said she spotted the mayor in his truck outside Lisi’s house brushing his teeth and spitting his oral bilge out onto the street. “And I thought,” she later said, “I can’t believe I’m seeing what I’m seeing.”

I can’t believe I’m seeing what I’m seeing.

Mayor Rob Ford’s behaviour goes beyond seedy.

The man is a monumental fucking liar, to boot.

“I cannot comment on a video that I have not seen or does not exist,” the mayor claimed last May when news of it first surfaced. Well, now we know for certain the video exists unless, of course, you’ve holed up behind the barricades of all reasonable thought and think somehow the police chief is playing politics and has joined in with the media conspiracy that’s just making this shit up. Based on the evidence released yesterday, Mayor Ford knew it existed from the get-go, with all the frantic phone calls logged between him and Lisi immediately following the Star’s initial story about it. That’s why Lisi was in court again today. On extortion charges stemming from his alleged attempts to get his hands on the video Mayor Ford assured us did not exist.

The woeful remnants of Team Ford is going to do what it has to do to fight this to whatever bitter end lies ahead, and I’m pretty confident now it’s going to be a bitter end for them. Going out on a limb of speculation here, I’m guessing Chief Blair offered the mayor a quiet exit yesterday. To think that the remaining redacted portion of the surveillance evidence doesn’t contain the mayor’s name and, in all likelihood, in a much more damaging light, is to put wishful thinking ahead of just plain common sense.

The cross your fingers and hope the worst is over portion of this end game is finished despite what the Fords may want to believe. Fighting for your political survival does not leave much room for actual leadership. We’re done pretending it’s business as usual at City Hall.

Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby summed it up in response to the controversy, saying Mayor Ford “has lost moral authority”. I’ll do her one better. Mayor Rob Ford never had any moral authority because clearly he has no moral compass. He and his dwindling band of rag tag defenders don’t know right from wrong and simply refuse to step up and accept responsibility for their actions.

This isn’t a leadership vacuum. This is a leadership black hole from which no light has any hope of ever escaping. When the mayor’s staff has to contact the mayor’s drug dealer to find out the whereabouts of the mayor, well, I don’t know how to possibly end that sentence except to say if Mayor Ford was really looking for a reason why he should resign…

Any of the mayor’s 44 council colleagues still harbouring the notion that he’s capable of effectively running this city are both enabling his negligent behaviour and putting the city’s best interests behind those of Mayor Ford’s and/or their own political careers. When the budget chief, Ward 12 councillor Frank Di Giorgio, reacted to the evidence released yesterday by telling CP24’s Katie Simpson that “maybe he [the mayor] doesn’t do it [smoke crack] everyday”, he got the stench of corruption all over him. Continuing to pretend that everything’s fine is nothing less than a dereliction of duty on city council’s part.

Even if Mayor Ford thinks he can survive this and still play mayor, councillors must start working over and around him. There are few tools at their disposal to do this officially but they can start acting as if he’s not there which, given how much of his time and energy will be spent defending himself, won’t be too far from the truth. Toronto is now without a mayor in every way but name. Any councillor conducting business contrary to that stark reality will be complicit in perpetuating a fraud on the city they were elected to represent.

— demandingly submitted by Cityslikr