Marion Berry is back.

[Sannum]

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1020284,00.html?promoid=rss_nation

To hear Marion Barry tell it, his latest comeback is more George Washington than Robert Downey Jr. The one-time Washington, D.C. mayor, long ago dubbed “Mayor for Life’ for serving three terms, leaving office after being caught on film snorting crack cocaine and then winning reelection to lead the nation’s capital in 1994, says he had “paid the rent” — the service to his fellow man that God requires of a person on Earth. In Barry's view, he, like Washington, was spending his time in blissful retirement when he was called by the people once more to serve. Having lunch at an aide’s house recently, the ex-mayor recalled that every time he visited the Safeway grocery near his house in recent years, he wound up staying there two or three hours, with residents constantly coming to him to complain about the city’s leadership and beg for help.
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Now a senior citizen, Barry walks with a slight limp, coughs frequently and looks thinner and MORE frail. He’s in the process of finalizing his fourth divorce. Gone is the kente cloth and other African garb from his previous comeback to politics, replaced by dark slacks, a derby hat and a gray beard. Besides his drug and alcohol addictions, which Barry won’t talk about except to say he attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, he also suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes and prostate cancer. “I don’t have health problems, I have health issues,” he snaps. And he’s also tired of talking about his past. “You hardly hear anything about Bill Clinton or Robert Downey, Jr. There's racism in the downfallen community,” the ex-mayor says. “If you’re white, people forget about it in a year.”
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