May 13
Mega Mouth
Until now we were pretty sure Mayor Mel Lastman would seek a second term as megamayor. Based on his performance at City Hall on Tuesday, he may want to reflect on whether he should.
It's irrelevant what real or imagined grievances brought on this latest erratic episode. Remember Lastman's recent trip to a Toronto emergency ward which turned out to be not quite the frightening experience he had initially made it out to be? Perhaps those exaggerations were just another example of "Mel being Mel."
But this time, no excuse justifies the mayor's reported threat to kill or have fired a City Hall reporter - the CBC's Adam Vaughan.
Vaughan, son of CITY-TV's Colin Vaughan, broke the story in the last election of Lastman's infamous claim that there were no homeless people in North York, even as a homeless woman was found dead in the city of which he had been mayor for 25 years.
There's no love lost between the two but that's no excuse for Lastman's bizarre conduct in the council chamber, witnessed by others, in which he confronted Vaughan. According to Vaughan, Lastman said: "I've heard you've been talking about my wife. Stop talking about my wife. Leave my family alone. If you don't f... leave them alone, I'll kill you." He then threatened to have Vaughan fired.
Lastman apparently believed - wrongly says Vaughan - that Vaughan was the source of a story that first appeared in Frank which reported, without mentioning her name, that Lastman's wife, Marilyn, had been arrested, allegedly for shoplifting a pair of pants.
Several media, including the Sun, knew about parts of this story, including the fact no charge was laid. A police report said the store didn't want to prosecute due to Marilyn Lastman's age and lack of any outstanding offences. It noted she was on anti-depressants, although she didn't use the drug as an excuse. Until the Star, which obtained a copy of this report, published it yesterday to explain the context of Lastman's warning to Vaughan to stop talking about his wife, no media outlet except Frank had reported any of this.
We sympathize with the mayor's desire to protect his wife, but even so, he still seems unaware of his enormous error, apologizing as he did to Vaughan for "inappropriate" tone and language and for having a "private conversation with you in a public place."
In fact, what Lastman did was wrong in public or in private. If he can't see why, he might want to reassess his future in public life.
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Copyright: Canoe/Toronto Sun
