Two months after he claimed to have embraced sobriety, Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto was caught on video late Monday complaining about police surveillance of him and his associates in a drunken, obscenity-laced rant peppered with Jamaican patois.
As The Toronto Star reports, the mayorâs brother, Doug Ford, initially told reporters that while the 66-second clip uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday âobviouslyâ showed his brother, it could not have been recorded on Monday at a fast-food restaurant as the anonymous videographer claimed, since his brother, who slurred his words in the rambling monologue, no longer drinks or uses drugs.
An excerpt from video posted on YouTube on Tuesday that appears to show Torontoâs mayor, Rob Ford, using Jamaican patois in an obscenity-laced monologue at a fast-food restaurant.
Doug Ford, who serves on the City Council, said that his brother âhasnât taken a drinkâ since November, when he was forced to admit that he had smoked crack cocaine âin one of my drunken stupors,â after reporters and the cityâs police chief described viewing video of the mayor using the drug.
Within hours, however, that explanation was no longer operative.
After evidence appeared online showing that the mayor had posed for a photograph late Monday at the Steak Queen location seen in the video, he admitted to reporters that he had been drinking and was speaking to âsome personal friendsâ when the video was recorded. Audio of the mayorâs remarks to reporters was posted on Soundcloud by Daniel Dale, The Starâs acting city hall bureau chief.
The mayor spoke to reporters after Jonathan Goldsbie, a journalist who chronicled Mr. Fordâs antics before they were international news, drew attention to a photograph of Mr. Ford posing with patrons of the Steak Queen in the cityâs Rexdale neighborhood that was posted on Instagram in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
That photograph, captioned âThe Peoples Champion #robford,â and tagged â#rexdale #steakqueen,â was later made private by Herman Atwal, the Instagram user who posted it, but not before a screen shot was made by The Lede.
As Mr. Goldsbie reported in 2012, the Steak Queen on Rexdale Boulevard posted a photograph on Twitter that year which showed the mayor standing at the counter there, captioned âROB FORD AT STEAK QUEEN AGAIN.â The image, published at 5:47 a.m. on June 7, 2012, appeared to show Mr. Ford, alongside an employee, standing in almost the exact same spot as in the video posted on YouTube on Tuesday. Although the photograph was then deleted from the @SteakQueen account, a screen shot of the tweet illustrated an article Mr. Goldsbie wrote for The Grid, a Toronto weekly.
News of the mayorâs affection for patois quickly reached Jamaica, where, by chance, the main story in Tuesdayâs print edition of the Kingston newspaper The Gleaner, about a deal to export medical marijuana to Mr. Fordâs nation, appeared under the headline, âCanada Wants Weed.â
One Jamaican blogger, Ross Sheil, saluted the Toronto mayorâs obvious ability to entertain, if not govern.
Asked for her reaction, Annie Paul, a Jamaican critic and blogger, joked that Mr. Ford âhas serious Yardie cred,â using a word from the local patois denoting a gangster, and gave him credit for at least borrowing obscenities from a dialect so rich in them.
Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 21, 2014
An earlier version of this post misstated the first name of The Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale.