TORONTO - 
 
 Beyond proof of his obvious addictions, Rob Ford’s latest ramblings offer a window into his soul. 
 
 And it ain’t a pretty sight. 
 
 What it shows is too clear and too ugly for even his most loyal acolytes to ignore: Ford may indeed be “just human” — as his supporters are always so quick to insist — but he’s not a very nice one. 
 
 So it’s wonderful that the beleaguered mayor may finally be getting the help he so obviously needs — if we can believe that this time, unlike all the other times, he is telling us the truth. Hopefully he is doing more than just soaking up the sun at one of the family’s Florida condos and this isn’t simply an expedient, last-ditch effort to fool us all again. 
 
 For his sake and that of his long-suffering wife and kids, we truly hope that the private jet that whisked him away from Buttonville did indeed deliver him to a Chicago rehab centre. Let him dry out, deal with his demons, seek the therapy he requires and eventually come home to his family a healthier man. 
 
 But don’t expect us to be waiting with open arms. 
 
 He may have had that chance about a year ago when the accusations were first made but no longer. No amount of renewed sobriety will erase what we’ve long suspected and have now heard for ourselves: At heart, the real Rob Ford is a racist, sexist, homophobic pig. 
 
 We’ve all suspected as much from hearsay in the past, but the audio obtained by the Toronto Sun of his bar rant at Etobicoke’s Sullie Gorman’s is Ford’s Donald Sterling in his own belligerent words. 
 
 He’s mad at PC Leader Tim Hudak for agreeing with “all the gays” to raise the Pride “f---ing flag” at Queen’s Park. “I said, ‘No, that’s bulls---.” 
 
 He refers to someone as the “dumb f---ing wop over there,” and then asks, “Sorry. Is that racist?” Ah, yes it is, mayor. He calls another patron a “f---ing dago” — which is not only offensive towards Italians, it’s curious, since his best buddy is Sandro Lisi. 
 
 His use of these kind of slurs are not new, of course. 
 
 On the first crack video, Ford reportedly refers to Justin Trudeau as a “fag” and talks about “f---ing minorities.” According to a court document, he used a despicable epithet to refer to a Pakistan-born cab driver, “threw business cards at him and made mocking fake language sounds.” 
 
 As for Ford’s shameful behaviour toward women, his sorry record is already well known. 
 
 He wrote a character reference letter for Lisi, a man convicted of threatening to kill former girlfriends. There was Sarah Thomson’s claim that he grabbed her derriere at a fundraiser. And according to the police court document, he was heard making vile sexual remarks to a female staffer and a City Hall security guard during that drunken St. Paddy’s Day 2012. 
 
 To refute those claims, who can forget the mayor’s outrageous “I have enough to eat at home” remark to reporters last fall? 
 
 So there should be nothing shocking about Ford’s latest Archie Bunkerisms at that Etobicoke bar this week: Ford talks about wanting to “f---ing jam” mayoral opponent Karen Stintz, “but she don’t want it.” Even in his drug or drunken stupor, he knows he’s gone too far. “I can’t talk like this anymore,” he admits. 
 
 Still, he does. The mayor points out a woman, asks a patron if that’s his wife and makes lewd comments about her. Ford even makes disparaging remarks about his own wife that are too nasty and crass to print or broadcast. 
 
 His defenders will say it is the drink talking, or the drugs. 
 
 Who’s in denial now? Surely we have all seen and heard enough to know that this is the essence of the man, laid bare. The mayor of Toronto is crude and rude, a bigot and a misogynist who didn’t even have the decency to apologize for his vulgar remarks before he got out of Dodge in a last, desperate attempt to salvage his career. 
 
 So farewell and good luck to him. He will need it. Ford has to live with himself — but we shouldn’t have to any more. 
 
 michele.mandel@sunmedia.ca ||||| He’s been photographed seemingly drunk with a bachelorette party, and spotted at Wal-Mart late at night wearing pajama pants and a hoodie. In February, he arrived late to the ball honoring Canadian soldiers, where he was described as “rambling” and “incoherent” — he was once again asked to leave. At a party for the Canadian Jewish Political Action Committee in March, former mayoral rival Sarah Thomson alleged that he groped her buttocks while the two posed for a picture together and told her, she "should have been [on his recent vacation] in Florida with him because his wife wasn't there"; she said at the time that his behavior was consistent with someone on cocaine. 
 
 Much of this has been dismissed by his supporters as the behavior of a guy who likes to have a few drinks. It says nothing of the charges of assault and uttering death threats laid against him by his wife, Renata, in 2008 (the charges were dropped), or the call she made to police on Christmas Eve of 2011 following a domestic dispute or the 911 call his mother-in-law made the next day claiming that Ford was drunk and attempting to take his children to Florida against Renata’s wishes (no charges were laid; Doug Ford, the mayor's brother, later claimed it was a “misunderstanding” that was “blown out of proportion”).
– The Toronto Sun has a new video in which a belligerent Rob Ford threatens to murder someone, but will even that hurt the Teflon mayor? When news broke that he had definitely smoked crack, his approval rating went up by 5%. How? Because Ford, who's actually the son of a millionaire businessman/politician, "has staked his image on the illusion that he's some run-of-the-mill hoser, just like you and me," explains JB Staniforth at Salon. And part of his "costume" is "a readiness to admit that he likes to party—a cheery euphemism for his substance abuse problems." Here is a brief list of some of the things he's done in recent years: He was kicked out of a Toronto Maple Leafs game after a fan asked him to be quiet, and he drunkenly replied, "Who the fuck do you think you are? Are you a fucking teacher? Do you want your little wife to go over to Iran and get raped and shot?" A private St. Patrick's Day party kicked him out for, per a news report, "fighting and carrying on 'like an idiot,' [… and] 'storming the dance floor.'" He was once again kicked out of a ball honoring Canadian soldiers—he showed up already "rambling" and "incoherent." He once allegedly grabbed and groped opposing mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson's butt, telling her that she "should have been in Florida with him" on a recent vacation "because his wife wasn't there." She thought he was on cocaine. His wife has charged him with assault and uttering death threats, and once called the police for a domestic dispute. She dropped the charges each time. His mother-in-law once called 911 to report he was drunkenly attempting to take his kids to Florida over his wife's objections. There's much more in the full article. The thing is, "Ford’s antics, spectacular though they are, tend to distract" from his "vicious, xenophobic conservatism." Ford is all about fighting government spending and "those he perceives as the coddled poor." He's virulently anti-immigration, once remarking,"I'm telling you, the Oriental people, they're slowly taking over," and just as anti-gay. In a sense he's "Canada’s leading exemplar of the Tea Party model of identity politics; he’s a rich white guy who portrays himself as the angry little guy." For the Sun's video of Ford, click here.