Oh, Rob Ford! What next? In today’s edition of Toronto Mayor Rob “I Only Smoke Crack When I’m Drunk” Ford, the Toronto Star‘s city hall reporter, Daniel Dale, has filed a libel notice against Mayor Ford and demanded an apology and retraction from the TV station that broadcast Ford’s comments. In the interview, Ford said he’d found Dale “taking pictures of little kids“—Mayor Ford’s kids, to be exact—in a May 2012 incident. Police investigated the incident at the time and found “no evidence” with which to charge Dale.
In the Toronto Star today, Dale has written a first-person piece about exactly why he plans to go to court:
Goodness. As the mayor likes to say: enough’s enough.
I have served Rob Ford today with a libel notice, the first step in the process of pursuing a defamation lawsuit. I am also serving Vision TV, which twice broadcast Ford’s vile and defamatory remarks to Conrad Black even though their interview was filmed days before it aired.
It had become clear to me that, if I had done nothing, the mayor would make his smears some sort of political talking point. His comments to Black were no one-time slip; they seemed to be the first shots in a bewildering campaign against my good name. At a Tuesday news conference, he pointedly said he stands by “every word.” Today, he repeated many of his false claims on American radio…
As my libel notice says, I’m asking Ford to immediately retract the false insinuation that I am a pedophile and all of his false statements about my conduct on May 2, 2012. I’m also asking Ford and Vision owner ZoomerMedia to apologize immediately “publicly, abjectly, unreservedly and completely.”
If Ford does not do so, we’ll see if he is willing to repeat his lies under penalty of perjury.
No American city is even close to keeping up with Toronto for city hall entertainment right now.