Marion Barry, minor diety

(This Ain’t Hell file photo)

 How do you write a story about Marion Barry, convicted whore monger, crack head and tax evader without mentioning his past? Ask Marc Fisher of the Washington Post.

Even now, in the waning years of the Barry era, the man who once dubbed himself The Situationist is playing his pragmatic brand of politics with consummate craft. The same politician who railed against the evils of gentrification when Williams was replacing old housing projects with hundreds of new homes embraces those developments as the heart of “the new Ward 8.”

Barry is an evangelist for a plan to transform national parkland at Poplar Point into a high-end retail and residential community, a project not unlike those he used to deride during the Williams years as the vanguard of a yuppie takeover of working-class black neighborhoods.

Yes, he’s a tireless champion of the ever-poor in the Ward 8 neighborhood he now represents on the City Council of Washington, DC, but he also embodies the corruption and empty promises that have kept the poor in that state for the last three decades. Hardly a year passes that we don’t read another article about his difficulties with obeying the law.

In 2002, before he began his poltical comeback, he was arrested in a Virginia national park with a powdery substance. A few years later  the IRS had him in court for tax evasion (to my knowledge, he hasn’t paid a penny in federal taxes since 1999). When the IRS tried to toss him in jail when he failed to make any effort to repay the tens of thousands of dollars he owes, a judge blocked his imprisonment.

When he was robbed by several teens last year, the inventory of the property stolen included jewelry worth $14,000. And he still hasn’t bothered to repay the taxes he owes because there’s no punishment for his behavior.

But for the Marc Fishers and Washington Posts of the world, he’s a saint among men;

Still, the poverty in Ward 8 is palpable. We stop at a red light, and a 60-ish woman sidles up to Barry’s window. “It’s the mayor,” she says. “I need $4.”

“Y’all breaking me over here,” Barry grumbles, with a smile.

He reaches into his pocket and counts out four singles, hands them through the window. “These people wearing me out,” he says.

From the corner a few yards away, a middle-age man calls out, “What’s up, Barry? Got some for me?”

Marion, you’re wearing me out.