other countries' embarrassments

Rob Ford Seemed Pretty Drunk Last Night

Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who is best known outside of Canada for smoking crack on a cell-phone video that the public never got to see, despite a $200,000 crowd-funding effort to publish it, was again recorded being intoxicated and embarrassing on Friday night, though he appears to have stuck to alcohol this time. A Canadian college student named Mala did his civic duty by taping Ford as he wandered Toronto’s Taste of Danforth Street festival alone and “slurring in his speech” when he stopped to interact with other revelers.

In the video above, he asks a group of young men posing for a photo with him if he can join them at a party. In the video below, he insists “I’m not driving! I’m not driving!” and some other unintelligible things at an interested crowd. Mala told Toronto Now that the this went on for about a half hour, until some concerned-looking Ford staffers finally showed up with “at least 10 police officers.” “It just looked like they couldn’t control him,” he explained. “He wanted to go, so everybody went with him.” Politicians are allowed to drink, of course, but probably shouldn’t be when they act like this — and Ford’s history of terrible behavior means he has forfeited his right to be drunk in public, anyway.