Smoking

Politics is strange business. Here in DC we have a very popular mayor and a reform-minded schools superintendent who are, for the first time in living memory, putting serious political capitol and genuine reformist energy behind an effort to turn around a school system that's been universally regarded for many years as one of the worst in the nation. Have they been perfect? Of course not. But there undeniably is hope and progress, two things the district has sorely lacked. Yet the DC City Council has been growing increasingly antagonistic toward the mayor and chancellor, despite lacking anything resembling a coherent alternate viewpoint or education agenda of any kind. Instead, it's all about hurt feelings and disrespect. On Friday the Post reported the following exchange:

Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), in one of several tense exchanges with Rhee, complained that she had provided more information to the media about the fund shift than to the council. Rhee said that was not the case.

"I disagree with that," she said.

"You keep disagreeing with that and you won't be around here too long," said Barry.

Under normal circumstances if you disgrace yourself and lose your job by getting busted smoking crack in hotel room with a woman who isn't your wife, and then get busted with crack again by park police in 2002, and then test positive for cocaine in 2006, you're looked on with a mix of pity and disdain--if you're lucky. Yet in DC Barry remains a potent political force, to the point where people with actual jobs have to waste an afternoon pretending to be polite while he talks smack. This is definitely one of the downsides of democracy.