Rob Ford has friends in low places: jail, crack houses, six feet under — whence lie the remains of at least one murdered drug dealer photographed with the mayor.
This apparently makes him an ally of the people, at least for those scrunched into the trenches of Ford Nation, and no volley of scandalizing grenades will blast them out or trigger a retreat.
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Believe me, if we wanted to attack the mayor’s family, there is more than enough ammunition to do so. Instead, the Star — I can’t speak for any other news organization — has deliberately chosen not to go there, despite on-the-record interviews with no less an authority than Police Chief Bill Blair.
Nor did the Star — primary target of blathering attack by Ford & Ford — run with a story gathered a few months ago about the mayor making a peculiar after-hours visit to the Toronto West Detention Centre in March, to speak with a man the mayor has known since high school.
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This newspaper held back on the story at the time because the source was deemed insufficiently credible. Contrary to what the Fords endlessly assert, the Star does not rush to print every kernel of provocative news relating to them, even though the brothers clearly have no appetite for pursuing libel suits which would, by necessity, open them to cross-examination on the stand. It was the Globe which broke the jail visit story last week, reporting that Ford tried to visit Bellissimo on March 26 but was not allowed in. In a recent exchange with Donovan, Bellissimo snarled: “Buddy, I am going to talk to the Crown and police and get you arrested.”
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Incrementally, the allegations and evidence is tightening around Toronto’s mayor. Only the obstinately blinkered can continue to discount the thickening Ford dossier. Of course, they will, because not only Ford’s judgment is at issue but also their own. Some have long parted company with reality, left with nothing but the braying against media scrounging.
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For a long time, it appeared as if law enforcement was leaving all the urgent legwork to journalists, just as media took the lead role gathering evidence of apparent police abuse against civilians during the G20 protests.
Getting to the truth has exposed reporters to threats from unsavoury characters in the Ford circle of creeps. Sometimes that’s part of the job. But if police won’t do it, who’s left?
It now seems they are doing it, in their close-to-the-vest fashion.
I don’t expect cops to blab details about active investigations. I do expect the chief of police to tell us if Toronto’s mayor is under the microscope for drugs.
No comment, from Blair and his Iago spokesman Mark Pugash, just doesn’t cut it anymore.
