Cock of the walk.

Cock of the Walk

WASHINGTON'S CITY officials are marked off from the rest of the city by the requirement that they pretend to believe everything Mayor Marion Barry says. So it was that several of them joined the major in protesting a lengthy Los Angeles Times profile of Barry that is best described as Wolfish.

Reporter Bella Stumbo spent 18 hours with Barry and his cronies, then gave her readers a wonderfully colorful portrayal of the capital's cock-of-the-walk. As quoted by Miss Stumbo, Barry boasts that he is "invincible" and will get 65 per cent of the vote ("at least") in his latest re-election bid. Jesse Jackson "don't wanna be no mayor. Jesse don't wanna run nothing but his mouth." He jokes about cocaine use and about how much a Barry urine specimen would be worth to the Feds. "What I have done nobody knows about because I don't get caught," he hoots. He calls friends who have abandoned him politically "chickens, goats, and Judases." He wonders whether his second wife still loves him, then answers yes, she never had it so good in bed.

Caught with his guard down by a diffident-seeming reporter who just waited him out as he warmed to his favorite subject. Barry reacted with outrage, adopting the novel tactic of accusing Miss Stumbo of lies and racism. His pals chimed in that they'd been misquoted too.

But everyone else in town believed every word of the story. Jackson said privately that he believed it too. It was just one more giant Barry indiscretion--he never lets up--and it left him all the more vulnerable to a challenge. Joan of Arc could beat him, and maybe Pericles.