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:

What is it?

It's an Indiegogo crowdsourcing campaign soliciting donations that will be given to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.  It has a funding goal of $50,000, but it's what's known as a flexible funding campaign, meaning that all of the money raised, even if it falls short of its target, will still be donated to CAMH.

The purpose of the campaign is to put some pressure on the Ford brothers to make their personal and company financial records and bank statements of the last two weeks available to the general public, with a full accounting of any payments and cash withdrawals.  This is the only way we can be reasonably sure that the Fords didn't spend six figures paying a couple of drug dealers for a tape of the mayor's illegal and embarrassing activity.

I want to state definitively that this is not an extortion campaign or an either/or proposition.  Every cent donated, no matter what happens, will still be handed over to CAMH.  Think of it as an internet petition with a little more bite.  I believe that people voting with their wallets by donating to a worthy cause could maybe have a little more impact than people simply digitally signing a piece of paper.

What are we hoping it will accomplish?

Hopefully, it will accomplish the shaming of the brothers Ford into some accountability and transparency.  There is nothing (besides "stopping the gravy train" of course) that the Fords love to tout more than their openness.  Well here's their chance to put their money (statements) where their mouths are.  If enough people are willing to reach into their own pockets for charity and as a means of demanding accountability, maybe our Grinch mayor's (already presumably enlarged) heart will grow three sizes and he'll prove to the rest of us that he didn't simply use the family wealth to bury the evidence of his iniquity.

Will it work?

Probably not.  As has been pointed out by numerous news outlets over the past week or so, the Fords are apparently immune to shame.  So I wouldn't hold my breath as far as this actually pushing them into releasing their personal bank statements or company records.  Hell, even if they did, it's entirely possible that they used money hidden under a mattress or got a third party to do the dirty work for them.  But hey, at the very worst it means some money will go toward addiction counselling and mental health research.  And who knows, if this campaign gets enough traction and enough buzz, maybe they really will feel compelled to come out with their records.

Do we have an ulterior motive with this campaign?

Not really.  This blog, as mentioned in the Contributor's Guidelines on the right, is unmonetized, so getting a lot of page hits isn't going to put any money into my pockets.  That being said, if this does create some buzz, and that does lead to some page hits, and that leads to eyeballs on this blog, which leads to the potential sometime down the road of me being able to pay writers, then hey, so much the better.  As it stands right now this is a brand new blog with exactly one post (other than this one).  Some publicity wouldn't kill us.

But the truth of the matter is the Fords just really bug me, like they do many of us.  The smirk on Rob's face when he finally gave a press conference the other day denying he "uses crack cocaine" coupled with the radio performance he and his brother gave yesterday put me over the top.  I want these guys figuratively in stocks in the public square.  This is the best way I can think to do so, while also raising some money for charity.

How do you know we won't just pocket your money when the campaign is over?

Trust?  Haha yes, I know this is the internet age, so I'll have to be a little more in depth than that.  Basically, my real name and picture is on this blog, and $50,000 is hardly enough money to make destroying my own personal reputation and having to spend the rest of my life either in hiding or having rotten vegetables tossed my way worth it.  To further aid in transparency, once the money is received when the campaign ends, there will be pictures posted of me visiting CAMH sometime during the week of June 17 (I'm on a temporary work assignment in Mexico at the moment and will be home in Toronto that week) and handing them a cheque for the exact amount of the money donated minus Indiegogo's and Paypal's fees.

What can you do to help?

Two things.  One - donate.  It's for charity, and it's also for shaming Rob and Doug Ford, which means you get to help out two worthy causes in one go.  Two - whether you're able to donate or not, SPREAD THE WORD!  Share this blog post or the campaign page on Facebook and Twitter, tell your friends and family about it, stand on streetcorners with signs announcing it, whatever you can do.  This only works as a tool for shaming the Fords if lots and lots of people get involved.  So tell everyone you can think of.  There are little buttons under this post that make it easy to share across various social media.  Also, here's the link again to the Indiegogo campaign page:

Rob & Doug, Show Us Your Books

So that's it.  Let's start putting these supposedly transparent and accountable politicians to shame and helping a good organization at the same time.  Happy donating!