People may think there’s always some drama attached to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. But they don’t know drama, and they haven’t been around D.C. Councilman Marion Barry.
The man is the International King of Drama. His theatrics almost always involve a woman who misused him.
The-woman-done-me-wrong blues is the soundtrack of his life.
Barry’s latest performance came this week when the U.S. Park Police arrested the septuagenarian for allegedly stalking a former paramour. Initially, Barry called 40-year-old Donna Watts-Brighthaupt a constituent to whom he had provided assistance. She betrayed him, he claimed.
The charge of “betrayal” is akin to “The bitch set me up,” infamously uttered during his arrest at the Vista Hotel on crack cocaine charges.
Women rarely do Barry wrong. Rather the Ward 8 councilman appears to habitually prey on females, who find him charming and interesting only to discover, over time, that he has very little respect for those of the opposite gender. The list of women he has not treated well seems endless. (No need to name them here.) But anyone who saw the documentary “The Nine Lives of Marion Barry,” screened last month during the Silverdoc festival, can hardly forget the pain and agony on the face of Effie Barry as she talked about her former husband — his escapades with women and drugs, and the devastation she felt.
Womanizing isn’t the only known Barry narrative. “I-was-helping-a-constituent” also is a familiar tale.
When Barry reportedly identified Watts-Brighthaupt as a “constituent,” I recalled Poplar Point. That’s where he was when the Park Police found him several years ago in his car allegedly with white powder on his nose and upper lip. He was, he said, waiting for a constituent.
To hear the four-term former mayor tell it, constituents get special attention, leading him to meet them at all hours of the night in various secluded locations. Never mind the sole-source contract he awarded to Watts-Brighthaupt; an objective reading of Barry’s record of service, especially to Ward 8 — used as his footstool multiple times to resurrect his political career — indicate that constituent services may not be his forte.
The indices for Ward 8 are only slightly better today than they were when Barry was first elected mayor. It has the lowest literacy rate, the highest rates of unemployment, crime and poverty; it also has the greatest number of unhealthy residents. He often recites those statistics when he wants to indict someone — usually falsely— for failing to deliver services to his constituents. He uses them when he accuses executives — past and present — of morally reprehensible treatment of the poor.
But Barry has held elected office longer than anyone in the city. He has had the greatest opportunity to effect change. He has squandered most of those opportunities. As for morals, well, this latest incident reaffirms that he misplaced that compass years ago.
Jonetta Rose Barras, host of WPFW’s “D.C. Politics With Jonetta,” can be reached at [email protected].
