{"id":215,"date":"2001-03-01T19:52:49","date_gmt":"2001-03-01T23:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/?p=215"},"modified":"2009-10-23T20:02:37","modified_gmt":"2009-10-24T00:02:37","slug":"anthony-williams-greatest-hits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/?p=215","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Williams&#8217; Greatest Hits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sam Smith, author of the <a href=\"http:\/\/prorev.com\/indexa.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Progressive Review,<\/a> also wrote and edited its &#8220;City Desk&#8221; column about news and issues local to Washington, DC<\/strong> until his retirement to Maine in early 2009. One of my favorite City Desk columns appeared around 2000, where he details Anthony Williams&#8217; numerous achievements during his first term as mayor of DC &#8212; 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 &#8212; in a column entitled &#8220;Anthony Williams&#8217; Greatest Hits&#8221;. As the run-up to the &#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-216\" title=\"williamsgreatesthits650w\" src=\"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/williamsgreatesthits650w.jpg\" alt=\"williamsgreatesthits650w\" width=\"650\" height=\"990\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/williamsgreatesthits650w.jpg 650w, http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/williamsgreatesthits650w-98x150.jpg 98w, http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/williamsgreatesthits650w-328x500.jpg 328w, http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/williamsgreatesthits650w-393x600.jpg 393w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/>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&#8217;d saved that issue of the Washington Post Sunday Magazine with the cover story on Williams &#8212; while he was running for re-election, I think &#8212; 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&#8217; bowtie. So, apart from being a soulless Ivy League technocrat and servant of oligarchs, Anthony Williams really did look like his momma dressed him.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"improvisational firefighting\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sinkers.org\/posters\/williams\/firefighters02.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Improvisational Firefighting, <\/a>medium-res jpg image<\/strong> 645k<br \/>\n<strong><a class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"write-in incumbent\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sinkers.org\/posters\/williams\/petitionfraud.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Write-In Incumbent, <\/a>medium-res jpg image <\/strong>710k<br \/>\n<strong><a class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"not enough health inspectors\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sinkers.org\/posters\/williams\/healthinspectors.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Not Enough Health Inspectors,<\/a> medium-res jpg image<\/strong> 645k<strong><br \/>\n<a class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"DC General Hospital closed\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sinkers.org\/posters\/williams\/dcgeneral.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">DC General Hospital Closed, <\/a>medium-res jpg image <\/strong>645k<br \/>\n<strong><a class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Schools Closed, Land Sold\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sinkers.org\/posters\/williams\/schoolsclosed.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Schools Closed, Land Sold, <\/a>medium-res jpg image<\/strong> 710k<br \/>\n<strong><a class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Family Shelters Closed\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sinkers.org\/posters\/williams\/familyshelter.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Family Shelters Closed, <\/a>medium-res jpg image<\/strong> 645k<br \/>\n<strong><a class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"UDC Public Radio Sellout\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sinkers.org\/posters\/williams\/wdcu_sellout.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">UDC Public Radio Sellout, <\/a>medium-res jpg image<\/strong> 581k<br \/>\n<strong><a class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"University of DC Gutted\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sinkers.org\/posters\/williams\/univdc_gutted.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">University of DC Gutted, <\/a>medium-res jpg image<\/strong> 710k<br \/>\n<strong><a class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Understaffed Fire Trucks\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sinkers.org\/posters\/williams\/firefighters.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Understaffed Fire Trucks, <\/a>medium-res jpg image<\/strong> 774k<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sam Smith, author of the Progressive Review, also wrote and edited its &#8220;City Desk&#8221; 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&#8217; numerous achievements during his first term as mayor of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,20,5,10],"tags":[66,69,70,68,67,65],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dc-local","category-health-care","category-liberty","category-media","tag-dc-general-hospital","tag-firefighters","tag-health","tag-shelters","tag-washington-dc","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}