THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605170093
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
MARION BARRY has found redemption.
Yet again.
The prodigal son of redemption has returned from a self-imposed spiritual retreat, rumored to have beennear substance-abuse ``relapse,'' proclaiming salvation. His own, not the city of Washington's, the city for which he is responsible.
I'm doing my best to understand the Barry phenomenon. . . . But how many ``redemptions'' is this man entitled to?
Wiley Hall III has been trying to understand Barry a lot longer than I have. He's writing a book about the five-term D.C. mayor. I'm editing it.
The other day Wiley and I were sitting around talking redemption. Just the two of us, journalists, black and white, looking at the gray.
I raised an eyebrow, arched by secular humanism and by a sense of redemption experienced first through literature, not religion, and beseech Wiley, a black native Washingtonian, to tell me more.
Tell me more than a prison term for a cocaine bust, more than African clothes, a new wife - his fourth, this one ``solid'' and less attractive - and declarations of redemption. Give me proof. Some potholes filled, some snow plowed. Some talk of the city's health, for a change, not the mayor's.
Though more sympathetic, Wiley, too, doubts. It is not until he tells me of his morally steadfast mother, an educated woman who has never lost faith in Marion Barry, that it begins to connect with me. I begin to see beyond the 12-step recovery programs, the confessions and the prayers. Beyond the self of the sinner to . . . beauty.
The truth of redemption, I see, is forgiveness. Hope, not salvation. The truth is Wiley's mother.
Some may call it God. The more cynical would call it ignorance. But the wellspring of hope to which Marion Barry always returns is not divine; it is all too human. He has a place in people's hearts because they have made room. They embrace him. They forgive him.
Upon his return last week after a poorly explained 17-day absence, Barry gave a 25-minute statement in which he invoked the Lord's name 34 times. But even more important were the ``amens'' that his words elicited.
Is the hope of his supporters false? Does it matter if it is?
``I am redeemed! I am resurrected! I am rejuvenated!'' Wiley recalls Barry regaling the congregation of an African-American Baptist church in Baltimore after his 1992 release from prison. On the road to a political comeback, the poor North Carolina boy who came to prominence in the 1960s while working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was once again testing the waters.
When the preacher exhorted all who had walked life's ``dark side'' to stand with Barry, a then-former three-term Washington mayor, a sea of bodies arose. Conspicuous in his seat, Wiley Hall III fidgeted, wanting ``to belong,'' but finding no cause to stand.
I have always seen Marion Barry as a narcissist who for decades has abused the trust of his constituents, and who, with his public displays of martyrdom, makes a mockery of the hard work of character rebuilding. Wiley sees him as a social idealist undone by the disappointments of big-city politics. For him, the politics corrupted the man - albeit a flawed man - not the man, the politics. The dream of LBJ's ``Great Society'' was just that. A dream.
Yet Wiley, a man in his 40s, also sees in Barry a smooth salesman, marketing a product that he knows his consumers want to buy - hope, faith, salvation, self-determination, a rise from poverty. God.
Is it genuine, Wiley wants to know, or is it mere role-playing? Who is the real Marion Barry? Does the man himself, now 60 years old, even know?
I start to wonder: How much does it matter? Has the man given way to the symbol?
As Wiley and I look at the gray, I see beyond Marion Barry to the people, to Wiley's mother and to other African-Americans for whom Washington's mayor is much more than a public official.
To err may be human, but so, too, is to forgive. The only question is the price paid when hope that springs eternal proves false. Perhaps there is no price. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is a lawyer and book editor of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB