[2380] in Humor
Marion Barry's Twisted Truths
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark A. Herschberg)
Tue Jul 14 12:41:21 1998
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Cc: be@theory.lcs.mit.edu
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 12:34:05 EDT
From: "Mark A. Herschberg" <hershey@MIT.EDU>
Thank God for Dan Quayle, he never let us down!
--Mark
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"Oh Yeah? We Think Your Mayor's An Oaf Too"
from Letterman's "Top 10 DC Tourist Slogans"
Putting Words in His Mouth
By Steve Twomey
Monday, July 13, 1998; Page B01
Can you believe Marion Barry said this?
"The brave men who died in Vietnam, more than 100 percent of which
were black, were the ultimate sacrifice."
Or this?
"I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves.
The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the
1600s. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, and he was not a
Republican."
Or this?
"I am clearly more popular than Reagan. I am in my third term. Where's
Reagan? Gone after two! Defeated by George Bush and Michael Dukakis,
no less."
Can you believe the lame-duck legend said those things?
I can't.
Hizzoner is many things, but a buffoon is hardly one of them. Yet, across
the nation, there are probably a lot of folk who believe he did say those
things, because for several weeks now, a list purporting to be Barry's
wacky utterances -- and clearly intended to be taken as factual -- has
circulated through cyberspace, emanating from a point I cannot trace and
offering no sources for the quotes.
There are 14 alleged sayings of Chairman Marion, each amusing for its
inanity or outrageousness, and they've been e-mailed coast to coast and
even been reprinted in a neighborhood newspaper in Washington. It all
reinforces the belief -- not that reinforcement was needed -- that the
city is led by one unintentionally funny character.
"The contagious people of Washington have stood firm against
diversity during this long period of increment weather," goes one
quote.
"The laws in this city are clearly racist," goes another. "All laws
are racist. The law of gravity is racist."
What a hoot.
Except, I had the unrivaled Washington Post library search the Nexus
database for the quotes, figuring whoever compiled the list culled them
from the print media. The search -- which included three publications
that commonly carry Barry's words, The Post, the Washington Times and
Washingtonian magazine -- turned up one exact match:
"Bitch set me up."
That one will probably be on his tombstone. The search also found a 1989
Post story that suggested Barry said something very close to another quote
on the cyberspace list, which is: "If you take out the killings, Washington
actually has a very, very low crime rate."
Beyond Nexus, I consulted three of the greatest Barry aficionados in the
world, Ken Cummins of the City Paper, Tom Sherwood of WRC-TV and
Mark Plotkin of WAMU-FM, all of whom had heard about the list. You'd
think that if the quotes were real, each would be recalled by at least
one of my panelists, because they are such great quotes. But here's what
the troika said about a majority:
Don't recall it.
In fact, Sherwood, who co-authored a book about Barry, observed that
the mayor "just doesn't talk like many of these, his inflections, his
choice of words. They just don't ring true."
Not infrequently, a panelist said a quote was something Barry could have
said, or sounded very familiar or was perhaps a stitching together of
things he definitely did say. For example: "I promise you a police car
on every sidewalk."
"He's capable of saying that," Plotkin said. "He'd especially say that at
some community thing, some community rally, and then deny having said it
to another neighborhood."
But Plotkin had no specific recollection of the quote, nor did Cummins or
Sherwood, and Nexus found nothing. Here's another: "What right does
Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it
necessary?"
"That very much could be a Barry," Cummins said.
"He's surely said variations of that," Plotkin said.
But Nexus couldn't find the precise words. Here's another: "First, it was
not a strip bar, it was an erotic club. And second, what can I say? I'm a
night owl."
Well, everybody recalls the "I'm a night owl" part. Hizzoner called himself
that in 1988. But nobody recalled that sentence being preceded by the
others, whose presence increases the salaciousness and humor of the
quote. There was nothing in Nexus either.
As for the most stupid of the alleged utterances, the troika was dubious.
Did Barry utter the weather quote, full of its malapropisms? The quote
about Republicans creating slavery before there even were Republicans?
The quote about more than 100 percent of the fatalities in Vietnam being
black? Nobody thought so.
Nexus can certainly miss stuff, and my experts aren't infallible. So all
14 quotes could be absolutely accurate. But I have no proof. If you do,
let's see it.
Because as matters stand, it looks as if cheap license has been taken with
an easy target. Words have been tacked together, perhaps embellished,
maybe even fictionalized. A quote, I always thought, is what somebody
said. If Barry didn't say it, anyone saying he did dabbles in dishonesty for
sport.
Even Marion Barry deserves honesty.
"This is going too far," Plotkin said of the list, "and this is unfair,
because he's not a stupid person and these are foolish things."
"Some people," Sherwood said, "are so drunk on Barry's misdeeds they
need a 12-step program to get over him. . . . Barry is responsible
enough [for miscues] that we don't need to create stuff to criticize
him."
To reach me on the Internet: twomeys@washpost.com
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