Marion Barry—the four-time Washington D.C. mayor and current city council member—died early Sunday morning in a Southeast Washington hospital, The New York Times reports. He was 78.

Marion Barry was mayor of Washington D.C. He's currently a council member in the District. In between, he did a stretch in a federal pen for smoking crack on camera. Now, in his new memoir, he can finally tell you about smacking a woman "upside the head" and what cocaine does to his dick.

The Washington City Paper reports that ex-DC mayor Marion Barry wants to make his own biopic about himself before HBO does, because he is "unhappy with how [HBO's screenwriter] planned to portray his arrest at the Vista Hotel for smoking crack."

Current D.C. councilman and former crack-smoking "Mayor for Life" Marion Barry is "very sorry for offending the Asian American community" by making this astonishingly offensive comment at a press conference:

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.

Marion Barry—master politician, crack aficionado, crazy man, national treasure for reporters (and still married, btw!)—says he didn't really stalk his girlfriend last weekend, as much as he had a "spat" with her, but she's unstable. Or...something.

Marion Barry was arrested yesterday! He was collared after "after a woman flagged down an officer and complained Barry was stalking her." Barry's re-election as D.C.'s mayor after being busted for crack in 1994 is political comeback precedent. [AP]

So Wired editor Chris Anderson can publicly name and excoriate "lazy flacks" who waste his oh-so-precious time with their emails—but Tim Page, the Washington Post classical music critic, is not allowed to send private emails trashing idiot publicists. Last Wednesday, in response to a dumb email blast on behalf of D.C.'s second and fourth mayor Marion Barry, Page wrote back: "Must we hear about it every time this Crack Addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new—and typically half witted—political grandstanding?" Page has been "disciplined," says the Post, and also publicly shamed by Executive Editor Len Downie. In addition, Marion Barry employs the worst communications director working in politics today. When a question was posed to him about the Page situation via email, his first response was: "Who are you and why are sending emails to me?" Now that's talent.