# Marion Barry has died
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [November 23, 2014, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404 "2014-11-23T15:04:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 19
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/21 "2014-11-24T13:51:16Z")
> [@madmonk28](#):
>
> Yeah, black folk can be scary.
> [@TruCelt](#):
>
> FYI - My Mother’s Great Grandmother was a slave in Meriwether County, GA, and most of my cousins are black.
>
> So you can stuff that snide comment as well.
>
> I wasn’t scared of the folks lined up for food in Miriam’s Kitchen when I volunteered there in high school. And I wasn’t scared of the folks at the Community for Creative Non-violence when I attended strategy meetings and took notes and cleaned up afterwards. And I’m not scared of you, with your self-righteous references to skin color. My skin tells you _nothing_ about me, except perhaps that I’m too busy to moisturize.
Oh, Monk, bitch set you up.
---
### Author:  [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/22 "2014-11-24T14:55:18Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#):
>
> Oh, Monk, bitch set you up.
Best laugh I’ve had in ages. Thanks Mouse! 😃
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### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/23 "2014-11-24T14:59:34Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#):
>
> There goes the dream ticket of him running with Al Franken.
If the Democrats are looking to totally throw the 2016 election, they could always swap in Al Sharpton 😛
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### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/24 "2014-11-24T15:13:17Z")
Actually, I take that back. A much more direct replacement would be Kwame Kilpatrick, the former mayor of Detroit. He similarly hired incompetant buddies to key city positions, and spent his entire term in office ignoring the city’s problems. Kwame didn’t manage to pull off getting relected after getting busted for smoking crack, but he did get hit with a federal indictment, which is how Detroit finally got rid of his worthless ass.
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### Author:  [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/25 "2014-11-24T15:19:51Z")
Yeah, but neither of your suggestions would yield a Franken-Barry ticket.
Maybe if he picked Ben Stein as his running mate…
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/26 "2014-11-24T15:28:59Z")
Bitch set him up. And what do you expect? He was a night owl.
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### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/27 "2014-11-24T15:34:12Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#):
>
> Yeah, but neither of your suggestions would yield a Franken-Barry ticket.
>
> Maybe if he picked Ben Stein as his running mate…
Franken-Barry sucked. If you could put together a Choc-Ula ticket, I’d totally vote for that 😃
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### Author:  [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/28 "2014-11-24T15:46:07Z")
A very Marion Berry to us, to us!
A very Marion Berry to us, to us!
If there are no objections, let it be unanimous,
A very Marion Berry to us!
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### Author:  [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/29 "2014-11-24T16:27:02Z")
In lieu of flowers, his family asks that you send crack. Lots and lots of crack, for he took most of it with him
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/30 "2014-11-24T16:30:20Z")
In other news, his family is having trouble finding an appropriate tombstone. All the ones they have looked at either cracked too much or not cracked enough.
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/31 "2014-11-24T19:32:34Z")
> [@OneCentStamp](#):
>
> Maybe, but not by much. Spent any time in DC? 😛
I lived there for a couple of years in total, once for a year on the military base in Southeast, and then for a year in Rosslyn, VA when I was in the Foreign Service. I also lived in Kampala, Uganda, where city governance was very much Barry-like.
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### Author:  [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/32 "2014-11-24T20:33:46Z")
> [@Chefguy](#):
>
> I lived there for a couple of years in total, once for a year on the military base in Southeast, and then for a year in Rosslyn, VA when I was in the Foreign Service. I also lived in Kampala, Uganda, where city governance was very much Barry-like.
Yeah, I grew up in the 'burbs on the Maryland side; my dad worked in DC my whole life. I’d say that, except for him being elected to office through an actual democratic process, it was very Third World-dictatorish. 😛
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### Author:  [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/33 "2014-11-24T20:46:04Z")
I’m from the DC area. So I got to hear about MB quite a bit. Marion Barry was a great example of The People getting the governance they deserve.
Saying his name in front of my normally quiet father was a sure way to set him off on a rascist rant about how things really went to hell once black folks began running cities.
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### Author:  [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2014, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/34 "2014-11-24T22:04:11Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#):
>
> In lieu of flowers, his family asks that you send crack. Lots and lots of crack, for he took most of it with him
Well… to be fair, he was good craic.
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### Author:  [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2014, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/35 "2014-11-25T00:23:37Z")
I’m surprised he made it this long. I expected some sort of more dramatic death ages ago.
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2014, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/36 "2014-11-25T00:28:36Z")
> [@Count\_Blucher](#):
>
> Well… to be fair, he was good craic.
Maybe if we had more Irish craic over here, we wouldn’t need American crack.
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### Author:  [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2014, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/37 "2014-11-25T01:30:05Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#):
>
> There goes the dream ticket of him running with Al Franken.
In other news: Bradley Acula was just admitted to Med School!
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### Author:  [@Caffeine.addict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caffeine.addict)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2014, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/38 "2014-11-25T18:31:39Z")
Where Marion Barry really screwed the District was by leaving the bureacracy bloated and disorganized. [Dream City](http://www.amazon.com/Dream-City-Power-Decline-Washington/dp/0786755938/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416939240&sr=8-1&keywords=dream+city) is a pretty fascinating read on the rise and fall of Marion Barry and what was going on the city at the time.
The crack epidemic hit DC much harder than it hit Baltimore. In 1990, Baltimore had 305 homicides with a population of 736,014. DC had 472 with a population of 606,900.
City services in DC have improved dramatically since then. The DMV is more efficient, and getting your car inspected is no longer the painful process that it was.
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### Author:  [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2014, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marion-barry-has-died/705404/39 "2014-11-25T18:35:32Z")
[QUOTE=Chefguy]
Marion Barry has died.
[/QUOTE]
_snort_
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