Via Wonkette, we get this mind-blowingly angry letter to Examiner columnist Harry Jaffe (text doc) from Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry’s chief of staff, Keith Andrew Perry. As you’ll recall, Jaffe published a column last week wondering why Barry couldn’t have used a rather expensive collection of watches and cuff links, which were recently stolen from his home, to pay some of his tax burden in the years when he was known not to have paid taxes. Jaffe was actually awfully polite about his line of inquiry, taking pains to note that he takes “no joy in reporting the details of the break-in to Marion Barry’s home.” Frankly, he was nicer about it than he needed to be. It wasn’t a mean-spirited attack, but rather a careful look at the details of the police report and a relatively polite curiosity about the finances of an elected official who has been convicted of two misdemeanor tax charges.

Perry apparently does not agree with us. In the letter, dated yesterday and copied to the publisher and top editors at the Examiner, he outlined his feelings thusly:

Won’t you at long last stop the Barry bashing that you have engaged in for the past 20 years? Don’t you have other things to write about? Don’t you have something better to do with your time? Besides, it’s not as if you have been successful in your efforts to discredit him or destroy his career. He is still standing because people can and do read the cynical and small minded invective offered by you and your cohorts in the stop Barry crowd, as the flawed emotional wailings of people who are frustrated at their relative impotence and irrelevance in the public square.

Most of all, your column was bad form. To celebrate someone’s misfortune, even one who you so obviously abhor is tawdry and unseemly for a columnist for an unproven newspaper, which is struggling for journalistic legitimacy in a tough media market such as Washington, D.C.

Some misguided reporters over the years have erred on the side of trying to score a quick rhetorical victory against Mayor Marion Barry and have in return forfeited for their papers, all journalistic access to him. As a result of your efforts, this is now the fate of the Examiner. Until a retraction and suitable apology is printed in your paper, the reporters for the Examiner will now suffer for your miscalculation and will be denied access to the Councilmember.

We especially like the implication that celebrating misfortune is the domain of only more established newspapers. Think the Examiner will miss having access to Barry?