Banner Graphic, Volume 22, Number 105, Greencastle, Putnam County, 6 January 1992 — Page 4

THE BANNERGRAPHIC January 6,1992

People in the news Barry denying sex escapade WASHINGTON (AP) Former Mayor Marion Barry says the fellow inmate that accused him of publicly engaging in sexual activity in a prison visitor’s room was “just trying to bash” him and get his own sentence reduced. In an interview Sunday with a local television station, the former Washington, D.C., mayor forcefully denied that a woman performed oral sex on him in a crowded prison visiting room. “He’s just trying to bash Marion Barry and get his sentenced reduced,” Barry said, calling media coverage of the allegations “vindictive and irresponsible” journalism. FEDERAL OFFICIALS ARE investigating a claim by inmate Floyd Archer Robertson that a guard helped arrange the visit between Barry and the woman, who has not been identified. “We’re going to go ahead and take a look at it,” Gregory Bogdan, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, said Sunday. Barry, a three-term Washington mayor, began serving his sentence last Oct. 26 after exhausting appeals. Robertson, jailed for distribution of a controlled substance, said the woman performed oral sex on Barry in front of at least 30 people in the visiting room. “ART ROBERTSON IS a convicted felon. He has at least 5 or 10 years of time to do in the federal prison,” Barry said. “He masqueraded as a physician, and they are taking this as gospel. They won’t check out his word, his motivation.” Robertson said Barry confronted him after Robertson complained to prison authorities. “He said that if I complained, there would be repercussions,” Robertson said. “It sounded like a threat to me.” Two days after Robertson made the complaint at the minimum-security Petersburg prison, he was moved to a prison in Burner, N.C. Robertson told prison officials the guard, with Barry’s knowledge, helped have the woman admitted. “It was quite implied that it was a hooker,” Robertson told The Washington Times. “I can say with all certainty it was not someone who had been put on the visitors’ list by (Barry).” Sexual misconduct in prison visiting rooms “does occur, but it happens infrequently,” Bogdan said. • MOORHEAD, Minn. (AP) Richard Nixon donated SSOO to Concordia College in appreciation of its televised Christmas concert. “We want to express our appreciation to all of those who participated for producing what for us was the finest TV event of the Christmas season,” Nixon wrote in a note dated Dec. 27. The annual Christmas concert aired on public television. It was the first time the concert has been edited for rebroadcast in the same holiday season. Concordia President Paul Dovre called the gift extraordinary.

Proof truth is stranger than fiction

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) Did you hear about the nearly blind motorist who trained his guide dog in the passenger seat to bark when other cars get too close? How about the guy who didn’t notice he was shot in the face until the bullet was seen in an X-ray three days later? Police believe the man was shot while asleep; they found a note in his kitchen saying, “Bill, you’ve been shot. Call 911.”

WEIRD STUFF? YOU bet And as far as Chuck Shepherd is concerned, the weirder the better. In his “News of the Weird” column soon to join the Ban-ner-Graphicfeatures package the 46-year-old George Washington University law professor culls items from legitimate news publications to prove his theory that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. “I don’t think that true stories need to be embellished,” he said

by telephone from his Washington office. Shepherd began collecting the strange-but-true items a decade ago. He included favorites in a newsletter he sent to friends. They, in turn, began sharing odd stories with him. THE WASHINGTON CITY Paper, a alternative weekly in the nation’s capital, began publishing parts of Shepherd’s newsletter in 1988. National syndica-

“When Jetty was born, how did we know what his name was?”

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NEW YORK (AP) Singer Belinda Carlisle, who is expecting a baby in June, said she has forsaken touring, her personal trainer and her daily five-mile runs. “What the hell,” she said in the Jan. 13 issue of People magazine. “I’m letting it all go. I’m eating a lot and getting used to being a fat pig. And I’m enjoying it.” Carlisle, 33, and her husband of five years, Morgan Mason, hadn’t exactly planned to have a baby, she said. “We were sort of not trying, but then, I guess, something happened,” she said. Carlisle, who went solo after performing with the Go-Gos, was recently in Europe promoting her album “Live Your Life, Be Free.” RADNOR, Pa. (AP) No one can accuse Suzanne Pleshette of being shy, at least not during the filming of the CBS movie “Battling for Baby.” Debbie Reynolds, who also stars in the movie, which airs Jan. 12, said the two were eating lunch on the set one day with about 100 people sitting around. “All of a sudden, she blurted out, ‘My pantyhose are so tight that I can’t eat,’ and proceeded to reach under the table and take them off,” Reynolds said in the Jan. 11 issue of TV Guide. “When she noticed people staring at her, she simply stood up, folded the pantyhose, put them in her purse and announced boldly, ‘Well, they were too tight.’” • NEW YORK (AP) Kimberly Williams, who makes her big-screen debut in “Father of the Bride,” says stardom makes her a bit nervous. “I feel like my arms are tied to the wings of a plane, and I’m gonna be Hying. Half of me is so thrilled, but the other half is scared,” she said in the Jan. 13 issue of People magazine. In “Father of the Bride,” a remake of the 1950 comedy classic, Williams coaxes an expensive wedding out of her father, played by Steve Martin. Elizabeth Taylor played the bride in the original. Williams, 20, is a student at Northwestern University and lives in a sorority house. She said doesn’t plan a real wedding anytime soon. “There are too many people I want to meet and things I want to do,” she said.

lion soon followed through Kansas City-based Universal Press Syndicate, and today “News of the Weird” appears in about 150 publications nationwide. Shepherd hears from about 100 contributors a week and choses 13 to 15 of their offerings for his weekly column. Some people have made it into Shepherd’s column by being stupid, like the the teen-ager who shot himself to “see how it felt.” Others make the column for being clever, such as the inmate who won his release by calling his jailers from a telephone in the same Florida facility. He impersonated an Alaska prison official, saying it would be too much trouble to extradite him to Alaska. SHEPHERD’S GOAL IS TO share with readers the strangeness of the world, not necessarily give them a comprehensive story. “A regular journalist, I suppose, is under greater obligation of fairness,” said Shepherd. For example, if Shepherd reports on a judge’s weird ruling, he sees no need to mention that a higher ;ourt overturned the decision unless, of course, the higher court also did something weird. Shepherd, who specializes in libel law, said he’s never been sued by people whose deeds have earned them ink in his column. AND HE SAYS THAT tabloid TV shows seem to have created a real demand for the kind of weird news he writes about. “I suppose that the weirdness has been a constant throughout history,” he said, “but editors today are more comfortable about it.”

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REAL LIFE ADVENTURES by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich

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