Rob Ford was spotted clubbing on the weekend, making an appearance at Muzik, the popular disco to the stars at the Exhibition grounds January 11.
It didn’t take long, of course, for photos of the mayor embracing female fans to start making the rounds on social media. Only this time he didn’t appear to be intoxicated.
Why should we care?
Doug Ford quickly rose to his bro’s defence, saying Rob was on a campaign stop, had his energy drink and split. It’s the youth – they love him. Just another midnight glad-handing session. Uh-huh.
Except Muzik has come up before in discussions about the mayor’s past party episodes, as has his relationship to the club’s owner, the supplier of booze at the last Ford fest. And, more to the point, the club was the beneficiary of a sole-source extension of its existing 20-year lease pushed by none other than Ford ally and Exhibition Place board of governors chair Mark Grimes. But a hitch caused city staff to intervene and stall the move.
Ford didn’t jump in and scream corruption, as he’s wont to do in such matters – as he did to great effect on his way to stopping the gravy train in 2010 when the city sole-sourced a 20-year lease to Boardwalk Pub owner George Foulidis.
But that’s not the story Twitter was in the mood to talk about Sunday amid the post-Muzik buzz.
Was Rob drinking? How did he get home that night? Has he installed that breathalyzer in his SUV, the one his mom said he would when she promised CP24 viewers back in November that Robbie was on the straight and narrow?
There’s no reason to disbelieve Doug’s version of events in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
What the Twitter tempest seems to affirm is that Ford’s celebrity status remains intact for now.
It’s a problem for his political foes that all the world is Ford’s stage. The American media don’t seem to have gotten over their hang-up, and neither has the local press. The Star, Sun and Post all published stories about Ford’s Muzik visit. As one operative of a rival mayoral camp barked to me over the phone recently: “The guy farts and you guys write about it.”
Not exactly.
Members of the City Hall press gallery did take some heat for asking the mayor whether he’d imbibed at Muzik. But that’s a legit question given Ford’s declaration, after he blamed his crack-smoking on “drunken stupors,” that he’s sworn off the bottle.”
His visit to the club is a worrisome sign that the mayor may be flirting with disaster again after keeping his nose clean in recent months, reportedly taking up a physical fitness regimen and seeking occasional spiritual guidance at a certain church in the Jane-Finch area on Sundays.
But alcoholism is tricky. And Ford, from what we know of his bouts of public drunkenness, is a classic case of someone who drinks to inebriation or blacking out.
The last time he was clean and sober for any length of time was in 2010, when he went six months, give or take, without falling off the wagon.
But he hasn’t put 90 days together since. And his outbursts during the Monday, January 13, emergency meeting of council to debate ice storm relief suggest his stress level is rising.
As anyone familiar with the demands of a 12-step program will tell you, going clean is hard to do. You’re bound to fall down a few times.
enzom@nowtoronto.com | @enzodimatteo
