T. Milton Street: The "T" stands for "Tirade"

I came back from Milton Street's "rally" (read: small get-together) in front of City Hall about an hour ago. I still have no coherent words or thoughts from what I saw there.



For those of you who refuse to follow politics (or maybe just aren't interested in Philly politics), T. Milton Street is Mayor John Street's crazy older brother. He's decided that he's going to run for mayor in a race that already has like a dozen candidates in it already. He's also decided that he's going to say and do all the comically insensitive and outlandish things that politicians AVOID doing if they're going to run for public office. This guy has been in the limelight of the mayor's race for maybe two weeks now, and already he's calling opponents "Watermelon Man", gotten arrested for years-old parking ticket violations, and the list goes on and on. I could list all of his wacky missteps, but instead I'll just let you peruse the archives of the world's preeminent Milton Street analyst / historian, D-Mac over at PhillyWillDo.

Some choice statistics from today's event, courtesy of D-Mac:

2: Number of members of the reggae band that was supposed to perform that were killed this morning, according Milton Street
1: Number of hecklers who yelled "You're going to jail, Milton"
1: Times Milton Street returned fire against the "white people heckling me over there"

To call this rally a circus would be accurate, except for the fact that people usually come out to see the circus by the thousands. And, even though he promised he wouldn't run unless 5,000 people came out to this event, Street of course went back on that when it was clear that no more than 200 curious onlookers and a couple of news helicopters were going to make it today. He said God was telling him to continue on, likening his struggle to that of Jesus' toil in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. This, of course, was AFTER he drug a casket out onto the stage and launched into song in the middle of his rambling, hour-long speech.

You're sure to see a replay tonight on TV, as every media outlet in town was there gathering up the precious footage to chuckle at on the evening news. Even WIP, the sports-talk station, was there asking people what they thought about the whole thing. It's good for a laugh, if nothing else, and you might even see some B-roll with me in the back of the crowd, looking dumbfounded.

Links and pictures via [Philly Will Do]

Edit: Forgot to mention that I saw the Inquirer's Peter Mucha there doing his "Live From..." blog. Here are the entries (typically short and unfiltered) he posted while walking through the crowd with his laptop caddy attached to his torso: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8