Topic: Marion Berry, 78 crack smoking mayor of DC

[richb]

Marion Berry, 78 died Sunday.   The former mayor of Washington DC who was videotaped (and arrested) by the FBI smoking crack,  but voters were stupid enough to reelect him to office anyway. 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/23/former-washington-dc-mayor-marion-berry-dies-at-age-78/

[AmericanPatriot]

If they come in 3s, it's a good start

[AlanS]

I'm sorry. Was I supposed to care? He and Swimmer Ted shall enjoy company in hell.

But he gained international notoriety when he was filmed smoking crack in a downtown Washington hotel room with a female friend. He was convicted of a single count of drug possession -- jurors had deadlocked on most counts -- and sentenced to six months in prison.

Despite the embarrassment, Barry's political career was far from over. In 1992, he made it back to city government, winning a council seat representing the poorest of the city's eight wards. That victory helped propel him to a fourth, and final, term as mayor in 1994.

But his 1994 vote was divided sharply along racial lines and his political revival drew criticism from many. Congress moved to strip Barry of much of his mayoral authority in 1995 as the city flirted with bankruptcy.

Congress installed a financial control board, and Barry decided not to seek a fifth term. He held authority over little more than the city's parks, libraries and community access cable TV station in his last years as mayor.

"Marion Barry sadly turned the capital city into a national joke," then-Sen. Lauch Faircloth, R-N.C., said in May 1998.

In his later years on the council, Barry played the role of elder statesman, but he sometimes exasperated his colleagues with his wavering attention at meetings and frequent, rambling references to his tenure as mayor.

He also battled legal problems, including tax as well as drug charges. Even as he was fighting kidney disease in early 2009, prosecutors were seeking to revoke probation in a tax case, saying he had not kept a promise to file annual returns. The council also censured him twice for ethical violations.

And just to prove failure is a resume enhancer:

"Marion Barry changed America with his unmitigated gall to stand up in the ashes of where he had fallen and come back to win," poet Maya Angelou said in 1999.

[Alphabet Soup]

To me, Marion Barry was a bellwether to the sickness that was invading American society. Bad people come and go but it takes a certain malignant negligence to double-down on stupid. They elected Barry, who revealed himself to be a bottom-feeding crook. That should have been the end of the story with him serving as an illustration of how not to behave.

Instead, he was reelected again and again. Seriously people, WTF?!

You can add OJ and Mz Clinton to the bellwether squad. These people have proven themselves unfit for general consumption - yet a certain segment of our culture persists in allowing them access.

[Libertas]

[Pandora]

To me, Marion Barry was a bellwether to the sickness that was invading American society. Bad people come and go but it takes a certain malignant negligence to double-down on stupid. They elected Barry, who revealed himself to be a bottom-feeding crook. That should have been the end of the story with him serving as an illustration of how not to behave.

Instead, he was reelected again and again. Seriously people, WTF?!

Tribal.  Once a Chief, always a Chief.

You can add OJ and Mz Clinton to the bellwether squad. These people have proven themselves unfit for general consumption - yet a certain segment of our culture persists in allowing them access.

Tribal for OJ.  "Religious" for Her Thighness.

None of those people know how to think.

Of those who do, and I'm thinking of most Conservatives, we've neither tribal nor "religious" allegiance to those, of whatever human variation, who would lay claim to our support if and when they don't walk the talk.  And THEN, and I can hardly stop laughing, we are derogatorily labeled "purists".  Can you stand the irony?  Woman Communist?  Pull the lever!  Black Communist?  Pull the lever!  B-b-b-but, what about .....?  Doesn't matter!  Pull the lever!

So, who the hell are the "purists"?

[Libertas]

Fabulous Pan, I liked that.   

There is only one lever we need to pull, and it is at the gallows once the living traitors are caught up with...

Pull the lever!