Special breed of politician
It’s a rare politician who can make former Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, who was captured on videotape smoking crack cocaine in 1990 and has been caught in the years since in an assortment of other embarrassing controversies, seem like a model of dignity and probity.
That special breed of public servant would appear to have arrived in the form of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.
The 44-year-old leader of North America’s fourth-largest city fessed up last week to having also partaken of crack cocaine, something that had been whispered about for months. Shortly after he owned up to his sins, a video surfaced that showed the portly Ford in a foul-mouthed tirade against an unnamed individual.
The mayor said he indulged in crack cocaine “during one of my drunken stupors.” Two things are disturbing about this admission: first, it was “one” of his drunken stupors, which would point to that being a state the mayor finds himself in with some frequency; and, second, the apparent assumption that his constituents would go, “Oh! It was in a drunken stupor! Well, that’s OK then!”
Canada is one of the best-educated nations in the world, and Ford should not so readily insult the intelligence of its citizens.