Marion Barry: Ladies&#39; ManS

The Washington City Paper has landed a treasure-trove of voicemails and other recordings documenting the ongoing episode of COPS that is former D.C. mayor Marion Barry's relationship with the girlfriend he was arrested for stalking on Saturday.

Donna Watts-Brighthaupt is a former lobbyist with terrible, tragic taste in men. Barry hired her last year as his driver and personal assistant, and took her with him to the Democratic National Committee in Denver. "For reasons that remain murky," the City Paper reports, she was booked to stay in the same hotel room as Barry. While Barack Obama was busy restoring the nation's hope and offering a path forward out of our racial morass, Barry was busy, in the words of his girlfriend, putting her out because she wouldn't suck his dick. That's from an audiotape a fight between Barry and Watts-Brighthaupt, supplied to the paper by her ex-husband.

According to the paper, after Watts-Brighthaupt refused do the honors, he threw her clothes out of the room and forced her to sleep in his rented Cadillac in the hotel's parking garage.

But Barry's tender opening gambit eventually paid off, and the two started dating, which for Barry means leaving a bizarre and deluded succession of voicemail messages for his best gal, copies of which the City Paper has posted online. A sampling:

  • "I'm gone. I'm not gonna think about it anymore. I'm not gonna worry about it like I used to, not gonna pray about it, not gonna do nothing....You don't even exist. Goodbye, good luck, God bless you."
  • "Donna, this thing's gotten outta hand. That's too bad. I don't want to continue talking to you about anything and I don't want to press no charges, I don't wanna do nothin'. I just want to be left alone and so you oughtta do the same thing. Don't call me."
  • "Donna, you don't have to answer your home phone....Don't call me back. I will not take a call from you; I'm not gonna call you, so this is it."
  • "Donna, call me....I'd like to apologize and settle this matter."

There's also this gem, from a recording of an argument between the lovebirds, spoken by Watts-Brighthaupt:

You made me fuck you up in the middle of a Las Vegas casino. I had my shoes off. We were like fucking Tina and Ike Turner.

Where do you go after you've introduced such pitch-perfect generational catchphrases as "The Goddamn bitch set me up" and "You put me out in Denver because I wouldn't suck your dick" to the world?

And how does a paper that does work this beautiful—look at that cover!—end up in bankruptcy? It's a sad, crazy world, kids.