Katz Comments On Cocaine-Related Election Loss

Not content to just hear former mayoral candidate Sam Katz in the Philadelphia Will Do comments? Well, you’re in luck! Today marks the release of the DVD of The Shame of a City, a mockumentary about what it’d be like if the incumbent mayor came up with an pretty ridiculous lie and it convinced a majority of the city to vote for him.

Ha ha, just kidding! It’s an actual documentary about that actual event and how it happened. You see, during the run-up to the election, a bug planted by the FBI was found in Street’s office.

The Democratic machine immediately realized how this could be spun: Evil warmongers George Bush and John Ashcroft were attempting to find a way to indict all Democrats in politics, even mayors of large East Coast cities. This was, of course, utter bullshit, but that didn’t stop people from believing it. (I really thought I had mocked the idea Bush was attempting to get John Street about it in this old column of mine from college, but apparently I didn’t. Oh, and that column’s not very good, but it does contain a reference to John Street’s bumbling, which means my jokes haven’t gotten any different in four years.)

Anyway, Sam Katz actually has a commentary on the DVD, which The Bulletin tells us is most interesting and angry. (If it’s half as good as the R. Kelly commentary on Trapped in the Closet, it’ll be great.)

For example:

“I do think there was a drug connection here. I don’t actually know what it was or how it actually was ultimately created. During the Katz campaign we had heard a story from one of the workers in North Philadelphia who said that cocaine was being dealt out of a mosque in North Philadelphia which I kind of thought was pretty crazy. I don’t know that I took it too seriously but it well could turn out to be that that was the case and that that connection between Shamsud-din Ali and John Street was the match that lit the fuse here.”

Holy shit! John Street was dealing coke out of a North Philly mosque? He just became the most awesome mayor ever!

Okay, okay. Katz says he’s not angry about the election anymore, but he did appear to be angry in an interview with The Bulletin over Johnny Doc:

“I didn’t feel like Dougherty showed much courage. He would send these people who were on his payroll. I don’t know if they could plug in a fixture into an outlet or put a light bulb into a light fixture, but they were by definition Electricians and they were on his payroll for no purpose but harassing me and my family.”

Shame of a City
Commentary Commotion [The Bulletin]
Yesterday: Sam Katz Angrily Responds To Idiot Blogger