# He's back - Marion Barry returns!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [November 6, 2004, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370 "2004-11-06T18:33:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2004, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/1 "2004-11-06T18:33:06Z")
This guy’s got more lives than a cat!
[Marion Barry Wins District Council Race](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19418-2004Nov2.html)
> [@](#):
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> “It’s not a comeback. It’s a coming out of retirement!” Barry told reporters last night as he arrived for his victory party at a restaurant on Martin Luther King Avenue, near his headquarters. About 100 supporters chanted his name as he promised to put his long experience and still potent charisma to work for the residents of the poorest ward in the city.
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> Later, Barry needed help ascending an elevated podium, but he punched the air like a boxer as he delivered his victory speech.
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> “I’ve been knocked down. Some would say I was booted down, I pulled myself down,” said Barry, who ended three consecutive terms as mayor after he was caught smoking crack in 1990 on an FBI videotape.
[Marion Barry Bio](http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/lips/bios/barrybio.html)
> [@](#):
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> After serving a six-month federal prison term (and a term as Ward 8 councilmember), Barry reclaimed the office in 1994. But in 1995, early into his fourth term, Congress stripped Barry of most of his power, handing leadership of nine city agencies to a control board. In May 1998 Barry announced he wouldn’t run again and in January 1999 handed the seal of the District of Columbia to incoming mayor Anthony A. Williams, who had been his CFO. This seemed to signal the end of the Barry era. But less than eight months later, rumors began circulating that Barry would seek an at-large council seat. Barry quashed them the following June, announcing that rather than seek office again, he’d devote his energies to reducing violence in the District (a year later, he’d seemingly done little toward that aim). But the rumors of 1999 became fact a few years later: In 2002, he campaigned for an at-large council spot. His attempt ended in mini-scandal: Late one night in March of that year, U.S. Park Police found Barry idling his Jaguar at Buzzard Point in Southwest. Barry reportedly swallowed something as a U.S. Park Police officer approached and had a powdery substance under his nose. Drug dogs sniffed out trace amounts of crack and marijuana in his car. He bowed out of the race in early April.
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> To his constituents, the flamboyant Barry is beloved as a jobs provider; to his critics, he is blamed for a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy that virtually bankrupted the city in the 1990s. Barry has acknowledged his addictions to cocaine, alcohol, and sex, and he turned his recovery into a political asset in his 1994 comeback. He has not admitted his addiction to the media and to power.
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> The man known as Mayor-for-Life enjoyed a better reception in the private sector than he had in Congress: He’s done lobbying work for a private-prison company and consulted on municipal bonds for an investment-banking firm. But not content to remain on the sidelines, Barry again defied predictions and naysayers in 2004, defeating incumbent Sandy Allen for the Ward 8 council seat.
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/2 "2004-11-07T01:33:27Z")
The quote left out the fact the he was filmed not just smoking crack, but smoking crack with a prostitute.
I still can’t understand how people vote for this man. There was no question of a frame by somebody else. There was no case of mistaken identity. There was just a very clear and surprisingly good quality (though IIRC black and white) footage of the mayor sitting their and hitting a crack pipe.
It’s almost like Mayor Quimby.
“Of course I smoke crack and have sex with hookers! Can you think of a better way to pump money into the local economy? Now if you’ll excuse me, Krusty and I are due to cut the ribbon at a new brothel.”
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### Author:  [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/3 "2004-11-07T01:50:25Z")
> [@DocCathode](#):
>
> The quote left out the fact the he was filmed not just smoking crack, but smoking crack with a prostitute.
>
> I still can’t understand how people vote for this man. There was no question of a frame by somebody else. There was no case of mistaken identity. There was just a very clear and surprisingly good quality (though IIRC black and white) footage of the mayor sitting their and hitting a crack pipe.
>
> It’s almost like Mayor Quimby.
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> “Of course I smoke crack and have sex with hookers! Can you think of a better way to pump money into the local economy? Now if you’ll excuse me, Krusty and I are due to cut the ribbon at a new brothel.”
Funny, your location line says “Phillidelphia”.
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### Author:  [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/4 "2004-11-07T02:05:14Z")
Seriously, though, ignoring aside the arrogance and presumptuousnes of those non-District residence who have such a strong opinion on what amounts to foreign politics to them, I don’t understand how so many fault a voting populace for miraculously _ignoring_ an ultimately irrelevant character flaw that was forcibly revealed through set-up by political opponents. Any other time when voters dismiss a candidate they’d otherwise elect just because of a imperfect private life, we’d disparage them as being mindless sheep, but when D.C. does it, _they’re_ the stupid ones.
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### Author:  [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/5 "2004-11-07T02:06:15Z")
Crap - that’s “non-District RESIDENTS” and “aside” shouldn’t be there at all.
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/6 "2004-11-07T02:08:34Z")
My current location is Philadelphia. But from birth to age sixteen or so ,(1975-91) I lived in northern Virginia (specifically Fairfax county).
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### Author:  [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/7 "2004-11-07T02:25:15Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#):
>
> Seriously, though, ignoring aside the arrogance and presumptuousnes of those non-District residence who have such a strong opinion on what amounts to foreign politics to them
I trust we’ll see this line in every thread where a furriner gives an opinion of American politics. Right? :dubious:
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/8 "2004-11-07T02:27:18Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#):
>
> Seriously, though, ignoring aside the arrogance and presumptuousnes of those non-District residence who have such a strong opinion on what amounts to foreign politics to them,
Ignoring the way you’ve baselessly insulted me
> [@](#):
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> I don’t understand how so many fault a voting populace for miraculously _ignoring_ an ultimately irrelevant character flaw that was forcibly revealed through set-up by political opponents.
I can’t understand how people ignore or consider irrelevant the fact that Barry was proved to be doing illegal drugs, and was convicted. This isn’t an affair. This buying and using illegal and mind altering substances.
> [@](#):
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> Any other time when voters dismiss a candidate they’d otherwise elect just because of a imperfect private life, we’d disparage them as being mindless sheep,
Who’s we? I wouldn’t.
> [@](#):
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> but when D.C. does it, _they’re_ the stupid ones.
Because I never saw any sign of sincere reform in Barry, and I have seen signs he’s probably still using. You did read the OP? The one in which the cops found trace amounts of crack and marijuana in his car?
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/9 "2004-11-07T02:30:47Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#):
>
> Seriously, though, ignoring aside the arrogance and presumptuousnes of those non-District residence who have such a strong opinion on what amounts to foreign politics to them, I don’t understand how so many fault a voting populace for miraculously _ignoring_ an ultimately irrelevant character flaw that was forcibly revealed through set-up by political opponents. Any other time when voters dismiss a candidate they’d otherwise elect just because of a imperfect private life, we’d disparage them as being mindless sheep, but when D.C. does it, _they’re_ the stupid ones.
As an ex-Bethesdan and Washingtonian Barry is not all that “foreign” to me. He was snorting coke just 2 years ago. Hardcore drug use is an “irrelevant character flaw”? What rises to the level of “relevant character flaw” in your metric of character?
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### Author:  [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/10 "2004-11-07T02:39:30Z")
> [@duffer](#):
>
> I trust we’ll see this line in every thread where a furriner gives an opinion of American politics. Right? :dubious:
I don’t think so. I’ve already [posted](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5312490&postcount=118) something like it before and nobody listened.
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### Author:  [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/11 "2004-11-07T02:45:29Z")
> [@astro](#):
>
> As an ex-Bethesdan and Washingtonian Barry is not all that “foreign” to me. He was snorting coke just 2 years ago. Hardcore drug use is an “irrelevant character flaw”? What rises to the level of “relevant character flaw” in your metric of character?
Probably something like embezzling the taxpayers’ money, accepting bribes, you know, things that actually affect the voting public.
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### Author:  [@leenmi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leenmi)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/12 "2004-11-07T02:49:41Z")
It’s hard for people to understand if they aren’t from the D.C. area but, for whatever reason, Marion Barry has reached that level of popularity that he is almost beyond scandals. They just don’t matter.
Scandals that, for other politicians, are normally career killers are just humourous antedotes in the story of Mayor-for-life Barry. The voters didn’t care that Marion and his wife, Effy, were both having affairs. Voters didn’t care that Marion Barry was a self-avowed night owl. When his limousine was involved in an accident in the wee hours of the morning and it was discovered he was out partying with a beauty contestant instead of his wife - it didn’t matter. Smoking crack? “Bitch set me up.” With a prostitute? “Bitch set me up.”
Advisors and close personnel friends caught with their hands in the cookie jar while the city went to financial hell? Isolated incidents casting no reflection on him. Several of them. So isolated they were common.
While in prison, he was disciplined when other prisoners complained that he got a blowjob from a woman in the visiting room. While families were present. And the woman still wasn’t his wife. Voters still didn’t care.
Sharon Pratt-Dixon got elected and tried to make changes for the better. Voters hated her. Marion gets out of prison and runs for office; voters love him.
I don’t get the Barry love, but I have seen it first-hand. Barry is just one of those politicians that a city identifies with. Marion Barry will always be Mayor in the hearts of most D.C. residents. He has reached some political plane where scandals are humorous. He’s like Daley for Chicago or Huey Long for Louisianna (I know he wasn’t Mayor, but the point is the same).
Barry reached that place where he wasn’t crooked or shameful. He was colorful.
He’s Mayor-for-life Marion Barry and we pronounce it “maremarebare”.
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### Author:  [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2004, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hes-back-marion-barry-returns/273370/13 "2004-11-07T03:20:14Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#):
>
> I don’t think so. I’ve already [posted](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5312490&postcount=118) something like it before and nobody listened.
I missed that post. I guess you have the clout to say that, then. 🙂