Anthony Williams' Greatest Hits

Sam Smith, author of the Progressive Review, also wrote and edited its "City Desk" column about news and issues local to Washington, DC until his retirement to Maine in early 2009. One of my favorite City Desk columns appeared around 2000, where he details Anthony Williams' numerous achievements during his first term as mayor of DC -- the closing of city shelters for homeless families, the closing of schools for redevelopment as condos, the deterioration of city services, the closing of DC General Hospital -- in a column entitled "Anthony Williams' Greatest Hits". As the run-up to the '02 mayoral election campaign was just getting started, I thought this series would be an excellent and easy-to-remember reminder to potential voters about what, exactly, Anthony Williams had given this city in the past three and a half years.

One happy accident here was, during the initial sketching, finding out how easily my rat could be made to look like Williams with some extra whiskers, a little shock of hair here and there, and a bowtie. I wish now that I'd saved that issue of the Washington Post Sunday Magazine with the cover story on Williams -- while he was running for re-election, I think -- and the photo the Post used was one of him when he was about three years old, wearing an outfit almost identical to the suits we saw him in while he was Control Board honcho and, later, mayor: that dull-assed gray thing with a plain white or light-blue shirt and that friggin' bowtie. So, apart from being a soulless Ivy League technocrat and servant of oligarchs, Anthony Williams really did look like his momma dressed him.

Improvisational Firefighting, medium-res jpg image 645k
Write-In Incumbent, medium-res jpg image 710k
Not Enough Health Inspectors, medium-res jpg image 645k
DC General Hospital Closed, medium-res jpg image 645k
Schools Closed, Land Sold, medium-res jpg image 710k
Family Shelters Closed, medium-res jpg image 645k
UDC Public Radio Sellout, medium-res jpg image 581k
University of DC Gutted, medium-res jpg image 710k
Understaffed Fire Trucks, medium-res jpg image 774k