What I Do In Private Is None of Your Business, Folks

Here I am greeting a bunch of folks, folks. Photo via Facebook.

We're willing to bet these folks don't want to pry into Folks, now that the 2014 Toronto municipal election season is well underway, you will begin to see efforts by my opponents, the media, rival candidates, and police detectives to draw attention to issues in my personal life that have absolutely no bearing on my public duties, which I execute with the greatest of integrity most weekdays between noon and 3pm. I implore you to stay focused on my political track record, and not be distracted by references to unethical, illegal or douchebaggy activities that I do on my own personal time. Just ignore these smears, which are a blatant attempt to score political points, sell books and newspapers, or close a major extortion case.

I realize that this tactic of airing a public figure’s dirty laundry is a sign of the times, and I’m certainly not the only victim. My good friend Lord Conrad Black is being assailed for taxes that he evaded on his own personal time, and my protégé Justin Bieber was rudely arrested in Florida for drag-racing on his own time, and then arrested in Toronto for punching out a limo driver on his own time. Is it really anyone’s business who Mr. Bieber spits on when he’s not onstage, or whose mop bucket he’s urinating into, or what drugs he consumes on his private jet? Of course not. I’m sure his many fans don’t have any interest in what he does before he arrives onstage after keeping them waiting for hours, or what he does after he finishes his twenty-minute set. They respect his privacy.

If only I could say the same about the nosy media maggots who have been foraging through the decomposing remains of my private life, and vomiting up salacious details of my appalling behaviour, as if that were somehow in the public interest. But the joke’s on them, because ordinary hard-working, taxpaying, crack-smoking people don’t care about how many times my wife has phoned in a domestic assault, or how often I’ve gotten behind the wheel of my Escalade while completely hammered, or how many jailhouse beatings I’ve allegedly ordered. These are private matters, folks, and when you head to the ballot box this October, you should consider my record in office and my platform, not my character or my arrest record.

Now, some people continue to insist that some of my personal activities do affect my public duties, because they took place during office hours, or involved my taxpayer-paid office staff, or occurred in my actual office. For instance, in 2013, on Wednesday June 26th, Tuesday July 2nd, Thursday July 11th, Tuesday July 23rd, Thursday August 1st, Thursday August 8th, Friday August 9th, Tuesday August 13th, Wednesday August 21st, Monday August 26th, Tuesday September 3rd, Wednesday September 18th, Thursday September 19th, and numerous other days when we successfully eluded police surveillance, I met with Sandro Lisi (a great guy and straight as an arrow) during office hours. On those days, my staff told the media that I was meeting with constituents, and they were telling the truth: Sandro Lisi is a constituent. And as you know, I always return my constituents’ calls (unless their first name happens to be “Detective”).

Still, the animals in the media are never satisfied. While I have great admiration for reporter Robyn Doolittle, her new book Crazy Town downplays many of my legislative achievements in favour of titillating anecdotes about my family and personal life that really have no place in a biography of a revered political icon. She even goes so far as to recount secretly-recorded conversations that anonymous sources had with my wife Renata. Supposedly Renata said, referring to me: “He still thinks he’s going to party. He thinks that he, oh, you know, ‘I’ll get off the pills, but I’m not giving up the blow.’” Now first of all, I didn’t say that in that exact grammatical phrasing, not to mention it doesn’t include my promise to cut my PCP intake by half. But more importantly, it’s highly inappropriate to report what unnamed people say to my family members. Can you imagine the uproar that would have ensued if Bob Bernstein and Carl Woodward had used anonymous sources when they reported on Watergate? This is exactly why the media has lost so much credibility with ordinary folks.

In the latest twist, Toronto police have apparently asked for a warrant to examine my phone records, even though I haven’t committed any crimes other than the ones I’ve already admitted to… or that I may have committed while in a drunken and/or drug-addled stupor that I’ve completely forgotten about. In which case, I wouldn’t have phoned anybody about it. Isn’t that obvious? I know the police are just doing their job, but it seems clear that it’s all a political hatchet job so that their commanders can put their own preferred crime lord in office. But that’s not right. The people should be able to compare each candidate’s ITO and rap sheet, without being distracted by alleged incidents of deplorable personal behaviour or sociopathic character traits, and decide for themselves who they want as kingpin. That’s democracy, folks, and I am its crowning achievement. Frod More Years! (Eligible for parole after two.) @TOMayorFrod