The Shame of a City
The Shame of a City is a 2006 feature-length documentary directed by Tigre Hill about the final month of the 2003 Philadelphia Mayoral Election. During that election, incumbent Democrat John Street sought to defeat his Republican challenger Sam Katz. Philadelphia is predominantly Democratic, but early polls showed Katz with a small lead. Twenty-seven days prior to the election, the FBI revealed that it was investigating Street for corruption, but polls showed that the public supported Street more after the scandal broke. Hill attempts to investigate how Street turned the corruption scandal into an advantage. The film is named after Lincoln Steffens’s 1904 book The Shame of the Cities, which sought to expose the wrongdoing of public officials in cities across the United States. Plot summary Twenty-seven days before the election, an FBI bug was found in the mayor’s office. When asked about the bug, the FBI admitted that Street was under investigation. The discovery at first seemed like a death knell to the Street campaign and a near certain victory for Katz; however, Street and his supporters argued that the FBI investigation was an instance of institutional racial prejudice, polarizing the campaign. Moreover, Street successfully reoriented the campaign away from