Marion Barry

MARION BARRY LOOKS BACK (THROUGH A HAZE OF CRACK)
Former DC Mayor Marion Barry is best known for smoking crack in a hotel room alongside a female informant in a 1990 FBI videotape. Moments after the FBI sting became evident to him, he muttered, “Bitch set me up…I shouldn’t have come up here…goddamn bitch.”

After serving six months in prison for drug possession, he successfully ran for DC mayor again in 1994 using the slogan, “He may not be perfect, but he’s perfect for DC.”

Responding to criticism about DC’s out-of-control murder rate, Barry once said, “Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”

He has a new autobiography called Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry, Jr. Promotional material calls the book a “shocking and courageous life story…[a] provocative, captivating narrative…[that] is his full story of courage, empowerment, hope, tragedy, triumph, and inspiration.”

According to the New York Post, this instant literary classic has Barry explaining that “cocaine was a powerful stimulant that went straight to my penis.” He says the FBI set him up because it “didn’t want me creating all of these opportunities for black folks” and was waging a “war to reclaim Washington for white people.” The war did not succeed, because DC is still slightly over half-black. Although we would never dare suggest that correlation implies causation, America’s most dangerous cities tend to be far blacker than the national average. Good job, Mr. Mayor! You are an endless wellspring of inspiration and amusement.

FEMINISTS TO MEN’S-RIGHTS ACTIVISTS: SHUT UP
Texas-based men’s-rights group A Voice for Men has become the American Renaissance of anti-feminist organizations, seeing as how loud protests and alleged death threats against a hotel scheduled to host their conference in late June have apparently forced a change of venue. The typically histrionic feminist groups that claim we live in a “rape culture””€”without ever being able to provide one proton of evidence from American culture over the past few generations that suggests any pro-rape sentiments”€”started the Outrage Ball rolling. The hubbub was egged on by the congenitally dishonest Southern Poverty Law Center’s claims that A Voice for Men was part of a nefarious ideological movement dedicated to “savaging feminists in particular and women, very typically American women, in general” and that it spewed rhetoric “thick with misogynistic attacks that can be astounding for the guttural hatred they express.” One could choke to death on all the hyperbole”€”and it never seems to come from the alleged “haters” these days.

In the wake of the protests”€”which A Voice for Men founder Paul Elam dubbed a “disingenuous and quite insane backlash””€”the Doubletree Downtown Detroit Hotel allegedly requested that the organization pay to provide security, which it did at a cost of $25,000 raised through donations. Despite all that, the conference has been moved to a VFW Post in Detroit.

THE VANISHING POLITICAL MIDDLE
A new study by the Pew Research Center suggests that despite Barack Obama’s promises to bring the country together, America’s left/right, red/blue divide is widening and that both sides are to blame. The study is titled “Political Polarization in the American Public,” and its researchers conclude that “the partisan gap in opinions on more than 40 separate political values had nearly doubled over the previous quarter century.” When you click on “Animate data from 1994-2014,”€ a handy little graphic demonstrates the deepening chasm. If the two poles separate any further, we may have another Civil War on our hands.