DC City Council member and former two-time mayor Marion Barry was hospitalized in Las Vegas on Sunday, suffering from a blood clot that developed, according to him, while "waiting on a plane in Memphis." He said he's taking blood thinner, is not in pain, and that the condition does not affect his thinking. Nor, apparently, his will to tweet. In fact, Barry, 76, has been ripping up Twitter throughout the night and day with an amusing brew of random thoughts. They include medical updates, praise for the hospital staff, a shoutout for barbecue, love to his family, a reference to the late Chuck Brown, and calling out Channel 4 reporter Tom Sherwood for using the ruse of being Barry's brother to get to him through the hospital switchboard: "thanks for the kind call this morning (even tho u got thru as a "family member)."
He also revisited and apologized for some recent impolitic statements made at a budget hearing, where he criticized the number of hospital nurses who are Filipino rather than African-American. "Let's grow our own nurses," he said at the April hearing. It turns out his nurses in Vegas were from the Philippines and he was grateful for their care. From Las Vegas, he tweeted: "I stand corrected; I truly didn't mean 2 hurt or offend."
At one point he writes, "Ok, getting off Twitter," but then he doesn't. He notes: "I love Twitter&it's ability 2 let people communicate real talk."
Fortunately, Barry was released from the hospital and given permission to return to the retail convention that drew him to Vegas but was also told to "take it easy a few days." Will that be possible? No doubt we'll have to go to Twitter to find out. For now, here's a Marion Barry tweet recap: