Mayor Marion Barry, the capital s longest-running social project, announced he was taking a week off to “work on me” at a farm in rural Maryland — “a very special place that was established to facilitate holistic, personal renewal for leaders and others who work under extremely stressful circumstances,” according to the mayor (who then quickly hightailed it off to another “very special place” in St. Louis, which is marginally closer to the nation of Colombia than rural Maryland).
In a two-page statement, Barry averred, “The Bible says, “To thine own self be true.’ ” Maybe Barry was high the day they read him the Good Book, so it falls to us to inform the mayor that those words are from Shakespeare. They are spoken by Polonius, of course, a meddlesome old fool.
Incidentally, throughout the Reagan years, “a shining city on a hill” was repeatedly attributed by secular journalists and academics to colonial governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts. But Winthrop’s audience, of course, recognized the phrase and vision as from Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount.
To original sources, be true.
