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Mayor Accuses Colleague of Anal Bleaching in Bizarre City Budget Meeting

"Was it getting my sphincter bleached, is that what I earned my income for? No, that would be you."
Drew Schwartz
Brooklyn, US
Screengrab via Hallandale Beach/ the Miami Herald

City council meetings are pretty mind-numbingly mundane events, but every once in a while, tempers flare, passions run hot, and a concerned citizen launches into a fervent speech about legalizing happy endings or whatever. Usually, residents are the ones who take things on a bizarre turn—but at a meeting in small-town Florida on Monday, that honor went to the mayor.

Somehow, what started as a normal budget hearing for the Hallandale Beach City Commission devolved into an argument about anal bleaching, the Miami Herald reports. It all started when Mayor Keith London dissed a citizen as a "simple mind," and Commissioner Anabelle Lima-Taub called him out for, basically, being a dick. She went after the mayor, saying that London didn't have a college education and had never "worked for a living"—and that's when things ran fully off the rails.

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“Was it getting my sphincter bleached? Is that what I earned my income for? No, that would be you," London said. "Congratulations. Sphincter bleaching is a very up and coming business.”

As you can see at around the 3:20 mark in this painfully awkward video of the meeting, the room went silent:

London's weird attack seems to be a veiled reference to Lima-Taub's family business—her mom runs a spa that sells skin-bleaching cream, the Herald reports—but it still doesn't really make sense. The idea that you could somehow make money off of bleaching your own asshole, and that you'd accuse somebody of doing so in front of a roomful citizens during a city hearing, is plain weird, not to mention just highly inappropriate for someone who holds a public office.

Apparently London has a history of saying extremely bizarre shit during his tenure in local government. Earlier this year, a video surfaced of him asking a city employee if he "sucked dick" in prison, which is just about as uncomfortable to watch as Monday's meeting—and yet, like a car crash, basically impossible to look away from.

Lima-Taub told the Herald that, understandably, London's weird tirade about anal bleaching made her pretty uncomfortable, and that this isn't the first time he's crossed the line: She claims he's "made comments" about her "derriere" before. This time, she said, she's not just going to let what she's called a #MeToo moment go.

"I don’t shy away from anything,” she told the Herald. "I’m going to try to empower the women who are going through what I went through."

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