Banned From Gawker Update: Banned From Gawker Again!

There you have it.  I gave their editorial staff several days to respond to my question seeking clarification for why I'd been banned for asking them to front the money for the Rob Ford crack tape.

Today, I decided to use my other account to needle them about it publicly.  So on their current piece about Rob Ford's press conference today, I posted the following comment (linking to my original story about being banned the first time):

ARFox - Max Read
Of course if you guys had actually fronted the money for the crack tape instead of banning people for asking why you didn't, maybe Rob Ford would be long gone by now... 19 minutes ago

Grumpy Cat, Or: Why Memes Should Not Be Movies

I'm sorry guys.  I had a big post planned for today because it's my 29th birthday and I was going to give the "old guy on the front porch" treatment to a bunch of different topics, but then a dozen people in my news feed informed me Hollywood's doing a Grumpy Cat movie and everything got completely derailed.

"I Bought Hash From Doug Ford"

Editor's note: The decision to publish this piece was not taken lightly.

When the author first approached me about posting a personal essay regarding his recollections about buying hash from Doug Ford in Etobicoke in the 1980s while his brother, current Toronto mayor Rob Ford, was present, I was both incredibly excited and instantly terrified.  The Globe & Mail's in depth report on Ford's drug dealing past had just been printed, and obviously the atmosphere around the Ford brothers right now is extremely heavy.  It's no secret that they're both powerful and vindictive.

A Non-Eulogy For Non-Evolved Non-Thinkers In The Wake Of Henry Morgentaler's Death

You know what I've always thought are really fantastic? Human rights. Now that I've outed myself as a radical free thinker with that newfangled, revolutionary stance, let's get down to brass tacks, because I think a few things need to be addressed in the wake of Henry Morgentaler's death.

Everybody who didn't know who Morgentaler was probably does by now, if only because news travels fast on the internet and, to put it mildly, the man was a bit polarizing. Specifically, he had a thing about legalizing abortions here in the Great White North. More specifically, he thought it was a pretty keen idea and spent the majority of his life (when he wasn't busy surviving the Holocaust) lobbying for a woman's right to dictate what happens to her body. Bluntly, this fucked a lot of people right off.

Rob & Doug, Show Us Your Books Campaign Update

Welly-welly-well.  It's been three days, and the Rob & Doug, Show Us Your Books Campaign has raised a grand total of $0.  That's zero dollars.  As in none.  Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  Big huge rolling goose egg.  The opposite of something.  An existential abyss of unfundedness.

And that's cool.  It would have been nice to raise some money for charity (and the campaign is still live for seven more days so there's still time to donate to CAMH).  But this story is evolving so quickly that whether Rob and/or Doug bought the tape themselves seems more like a quaint historical mystery to a lot of people than an actual pressing public concern.

Besides, it did accomplish its secondary goal, which was to serve as pretty obvious clickbait for a brand new blog (which, given the fact that I was silenced by Gawker for daring to question their Crackstarter campaign, I don't feel the least bit bad about being forthright about, unlike them).  The Rob & Doug, Show Us Your Books Campaign post has generated four times as many hits as any of the other posts on this blog.  Considering the 2000 page hits we received in our first two days of existence, that's not too bad.

Still, I sure would like to see it work.  I'm not exactly what you'd call optimistic about the prospect, but hey, it's fun to hope.

Brian Burke Once Gave A Handjob To Pavel Bure

At least that's a rumour I heard.  Or maybe it's one I just made up.  The point is it's on the internet now.  Therefore I guess he has the right to serve notice to me online that he can sue me, right along with Poonerman and Slobberface.

No word on whether he got Pavel pregnant afterward.

Mr. Burke, the E-mail address I can be reached at is on the right side of this page.  I await my notice that I'm being sued.

Banned From Gawker For Asking Them To Pay For The Rob Ford Tape Themselves, Even As A Loan

Up until a few of days ago, I was a fairly regular commenter on Gawker.  Not obsessive or trollish about it, but I enjoy the site and its brethren (Deadspin, io9, etc.) and I make my stupid comments sometimes and then I go on with my life.

Well on Friday, after the mayor's press conference (the one where he says he doesn't use crack cocaine but fails to deny he ever had), Gawker put up a post calling him out for his parsing of words.  Having already decided along with a lot of other people that if Ford hadn't bought the tape yet he was surely at least close to doing so (that smirk really gave it away for me), I put up a comment on the Gawker story addressing John Cook, the author as well as the editor who broke the story to begin with.  I implored him to reach into Gawker Media's incredibly deep pockets and at least front the money for the tape if they could find the guys who have it.  If they insisted on using other people's money, they could still get it back a few days later when the Crackstarter campaign was finished, but in the meantime the Fords might get their grubby, KFC grease-lathered fingers on it.

Pots, Stones, Glass Houses And Kettles

Yesterday, the Toronto Sun published a list of dumb Amanda Bynes quotes.

Now granted some of these are indeed pretty dumb.  Bynes is obviously either going through some horrendous public mental meltdown, or she's the greatest celebrity performance artist since Joaquin Phoenix (sorry, Tilda Swinton, you don't even rate).

But really?  The Toronto Sun wants to call people out for dumb quotes?  Okay, fair enough.  After the jump are the five dumbest Sue-Ann Levy quotes I've read this week alone:

This Is Why Ford Supporters Stay So Loyal

Hey, look, we're all sick to death of the mayor using the Toronto Star as his go-to whipping pony.  Mayor smoked crack?  Gotta be a Star conspiracy.  Mayor is a drunken mess?  The Star spiked his lemonade.  Mayor killed a hooker?  The Star sent her to his room and handed him the gun.

But then I go to thestar.com and see this at the top of the page:

This shit really makes me cringe.  It's one thing to go after the mayor of the city for smoking crack with the very people he fights so hard (in public, anyway) to supposedly rid the city of.  Exposing a man in a position of major elected authority for using a highly addictive substance and calling people "fags" and "fucking minorities" is absolutely in the public interest.  Pressuring the same man to resign after such a prolonged attempt to deny and then to cover up those allegations is also fair game.

This, however, I think is unconscionable:

Three independent sources told the Star on Monday that Nick Kouvalis fired Massoudi from Ford’s 2010 mayoral campaign after the campaign heard that Toronto police, investigating an open car door, found marijuana inside and traced the car to Massoudi. 

According to one source, Massoudi said the car had been broken into.  No charges were laid and the Star cannot verify the information. At press time Massoudi had not responded to the Star’s calls, emails and social media messages.

Gawker Hasn't Posted A Story In Over Two Hours

They're usually more prolific than that, even in the evenings.  Could they maybe be gearing up for dropping a big bomb on us tonight?

Fuck I hope so...

Hey Drug Dealers - I've Got $200 And A Case Of Beer For You If You Send Me One Of The Copies Of The Rob Ford Crack Video As An Exclusive!

So I was just sent the link to this HuffPost story by an anonymous commenter.  Apparently there are more copies of the Rob Ford crack video, so even if the dealers got paid by the Ford brothers for it, they may still have a duplicate kicking around.

Well I have a message for those dealers - how about instead of taking the $200,000 from Gawker (since that money goes to charity if they don't give it to you), you REALLY stick it to the man and send it to me instead.

Queen Bathurst is a brand new blog, that's received approximately 800 page views in its first full day.  That's nothing, obviously.  But hey, wouldn't it just be amazing to break this massive, world-wide story on some tiny site?  I mean, who doesn't want to give the finger to big media by helping out some nobody with a Blogger account?

In exchange, I'll give you $200 (Canadian, or 2400 Mexican pesos if you prefer) and a two-four.  Any beer you like.  Even some fancy imported shit.

That's a pretty good deal, no?  Especially if you've already been paid once for it.

It would sure be one hell of a coup for us.

So whaddya say?

So, Like, Ford Apparently Just Hires People He Meets Wherever...

Just read the Toronto Star report about the mayor's entire communications staff (that being his press secretary and deputy press secretary) resigning en masse this afternoon because he basically took the statement they wrote for him Friday and wiped his ass with it.

Now, it's obvious the wheels are coming off the bus over there, and you certainly don't need me to tell you the specifics since they're just about everywhere right now.  But I did want to point out my absolute favourite part of that article (emphasis mine):

The resignations weaken a staff many councillors felt was too lean even before the crisis. Most of Ford’s remaining aides are young, and many they [sic] have little policy or government experience. Ford’s two most recent hires are 21-year-old J.C. Hasko, a Don Bosco football assistant coach and fitness trainer, and Brendan Croskerry, a musician who has worked for a marketing firm.

So basically, the only qualifications it takes to work for the mayor of one of the largest cities on the continent are either helping Ford with his (former) football team or, apparently, being a dude.  Just a dude.  Any old dude.  I'm not trying to make Ford out to be a chauvinist here (his offer to teach women about politics over coffee notwithstanding).  I suppose it could just as easily have been a dudette.  But yeah.  At this point, if you need a job, and you can stomach working for Rob Ford, I suggest you mosey on over to city hall.  Don't bother wearing a suit or bringing a resume or shaving or, hell, even bathing.  Just be a human being willing to work for him, and there's a good chance you'll be his new chief of staff.

Good luck!

Obvious Clickbait, or: Using Charity To Shame The Fords Into Transparency

On his radio show yesterday, Rob Ford definitively stated that the video of himself smoking crack and making racist and homophobic remarks "does not exist."

We (that is me) here at Queen Bathurst believe the growing consensus that the only reason he could make such a claim is that the mayor or his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, must have purchased the video for themselves and either squirreled it away or destroyed it.  Why else could he sound so sure?

If this is the case, not only do we have a mayor who smokes or has smoked crack while in office, not only do we have a mayor who throws around terms like "fag" and "fucking minorities" while in the company of people he once demanded be exiled from the city, but we also have a mayor participating in a coverup of his own illegal activity.

I'm not going to make any moral pronouncements about drug use or cast aspersions based on the company people keep.  What I am going to do is call bullshit at the top of my lungs over the unbelievable hypocrisy this behaviour displays.

So, in the spirit of Gawker's Crackstarter campaign, I've started an Indiegogo campaign of my own.

I'm calling it the Rob & Doug, Show Us Your Books campaign. 

What is the Rob & Doug, Show Us Your Books campaign, you might ask?  Well here's a handy little FAQ after the jump to answer some of the questions you may have:

But When I Grew Up, I Put Away Childish Things

Denials. They’re not just stupid homonymic clichés referencing northern African bodies of water. They’re also these cool things where you get to pretend something you did wasn’t actually a thing that happened, and if you say it loudly and repeatedly, sometimes people get sick of the whole topic and just go “yeah, whatever, fine. You weren’t the one who peed all over the bathroom floor even though you’re the only other person who lives here. Just shut the fuck up about it already.”

But sometimes the things we’ve done are just too blatant and too overwhelmingly important to pass off as being untrue.