If you didn’t already spend your lunch hour, like we did, listening to the series of voicemail recordings, leaked to the Washington City Paper, that Marion Barry left for ex-girlfriend and alleged “stalkee” Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, we can verify that they make for fairly fascinating listening. The tapes (and the Loose Lips column that goes with them) have even started to become a bit of an internet sensation, if the WCP’s Twitter feed is any judge: “Marion Barry killed our web server :'( … we’re working on bringing it back to life,” they updated earlier this afternoon. The web site and the tapes are both back up now though, so take a gander, or if you can’t listen in your office, they’re also offering some typed up partial transcripts.
All of the voicemail messages were left after the June 30 Wilson Building incident, when Barry had Watts-Brighthaupt’s ex-husband, Delonta Brighthaupt, removed from an event at city hall. In the recordings, Barry seems intent on making sure Watts-Brighthaupt knows that things between them are over, and that they won’t be talking anymore — except he just keeps calling her and leaving variations of the same message over and over again.
But the real find is clearly the recording that Brighthaupt made of an argument between Watts-Brighthaupt and Barry, during which Watts-Brighthaupt screams the following accusations at the Mayor for Life: “You put me out in Denver cause I wouldn’t suck your dick. You put me out in Denver!” — thus the City Paper cover quote on their web site today, which we have to admit makes for an odd juxtaposition with the title of the publication’s long running politics column. Seriously, is that really the cover that’s going to be on the weekly tomorrow? The quote itself refers to an incident last August at the Democratic National Convention, when Barry allegedly threw Watts-Brighthaupt and all of her clothes out of his hotel room, forcing her to sleep inside a car in a parking garage.
Our favorite quote is probably this one, however: “You made me have to fuck your ass up in the middle of a Las Vegas Casino. With my shoes off. We were like fuckin’ Tina and Ike Turner.” This apparently refers to a blowout between the two when they traveled to Vegas in May for the retailers convention, a trip that was paid for with taxpayer money. The fight apparently got physical, right in the lobby of the Paris Las Vegas Hotel, and this was several months after the two had reportedly split up. Talk about a couple of drama queens.
