at Pride-owned gas stations pulled gunsnon white customers, a Pride clean-upncrew robbed the Greyhound bus terminalnon their lunch break, and Pridentrucks served as mobile shooting galleriesnfor heroin addicts. Barry deflectedncriticism and discouraged investigationsnby a technique called “maumauing,”nsaying in effect: ” ‘Don’t ask,nhonky mother , because if youndo, we’re going to go out on the street,nand we’re going to start a riot and saynthat the white man is trying to destroynblack economic progress.’ And itnscared the living s out of thesenliberals who didn’t want any trouble,” anblack TV producer told the author.nHis arrogance increased after thenMartin Luther King riots in 1968.nDescribing how to rebuild the “new”nD.C., he told the city council: “Whitenpeople should be allowed to come backn[to riot-torn areas] only if the majoritynof the ownership is in the hands ofnblacks. That is, they could come backnand give their experience and theirnexpertise —and then they shouldnleave.” Accused of plagiarizitig hisncampaign speeches, he replied:n”What’s wrong with that? That’s sophistication.”nLife was one big 7-Elev-nLIBERAL ARTSnPOPULATION CONTROLnChina’s one-chiid-per-family policy,ncoupled with the traditional Chinesenpreference for sons, has resulted in annacute shortage of women. It has alsonfueled the so-called “flesh trade.”nThe state-mn ‘Workers’ Daily notednlast summer the re-emergence of annage-old problem in China: the abductionnand sale of women and children tonpeasants seeking laborers and brides.nRobert Benjamin of the Baltimore Sunnreported one Liu Shiming as saying,n”Girls are a special bank, if one is sold,nthe problem of food is solved. If two arensold, you can build a new house. Afternselling several girls, I will be well-off.”nIn a ten-year period Liu reportedlynabducted and sold 18 women and children,nincluding his mother, three-yearoldndaughter, and wife, for whom henreceived about $265. Before being arrestednand executed, Liu had earnednsome $1,600 in the slave trade. ThenChinese government puts the numbernof women and children sold each yearnbetween ten and forty thousand.n36/CHRONICLESnen waiting to be robbed one way ornanother, and Marion Barry was ready.nUnder Barry’s stewardship, life innthe nation’s capital grew steadily morensurreal: late-night crashes involving thenmayoral limousine, his mother-in-law’snalleged torching of her ex-boyfriend’snhouse, his second wife’s purchase of anVolvo and a BMW on a salary ofn$23,000, top aides using city funds tonpay their rent and buy groceries, ambulancendrivers who couldn’t find thenaddresses of the sick and dying, bureaucratsnsniffing cocaine at theirndesks, municipal clerical workers sonincompetent and surly that they had tonhave a special training program tonteach them how to answer the phonenwithout insulting callers. As his paranoianmounted, Barry developed a tastenfor sudden getaways, sending his bodyguardsnto New York while be took offnfor a mountain spa for high-colonicnenemas and meditation. Questionednabout these costly ruses, Barry toldnreporters to mind their own business.nThe author knows present-daynWashington very well but he is sometimesnshaky on the old city. He refersnto the “de facto” segregation of D.C.npublic schools and states: “They wouldnnot even begin to integrate, throughncourt-ordered bussing, until 10 yearsnafter the 1954 Brown decision.” Inattended D.C. public schools from thenday I entered kindergarten in 1941 tonmy graduation from Roosevelt HighnSchool in 1953, and the segregationnwas de jure. In 1948 and again in 1950nthe two white junior highs I attendednwere turned over to the Negro schoolnsystem and we were transferred elsewherenby order of the school board.nMy high school (also the alma mater ofnMayor Sharon Pratt Dixon) was integratednin the fall of 1954, as werenseveral other schools in mixed neighborhoods,nin hopes of setting an examplenfor the South, of which Washingtonnwas the official “Gateway.”nOtherwise, Agronsky, a reporter fornthe Voice of America and the son ofnMartin Agronsky, relates Barry’s storynwith a stark, just-the-facts-ma’am objectivitynthat makes his book all thenmore devastating, especially in hisnshocking account of the Barry jury’sndeliberations. Clearly repelled by hisnsubject, he is nonetheless scrupulouslynfair, sometimes too much so. He creditsnBarry with maintaining racial peacennnby speaking calming words after hisntrial when he could so easily havenexploited his supporters’ rage for hisnown purposes, but such a view ignoresnBarry’s psychology. He is both toonshrewd and too hypocritical to callnopenly for a bloodbath. Except for hisnsexual appetites he is oddly like thenfeline Robespierre, distancing himselfnfrom the gross Danton (Al Sharpton)nand the maddened Marat (Gus Savage)nwhile he waits for the mainstreamnto dry up.nFlorence King’s new book, WithnCharity Toward None: A Fond Looknat Misanthropy, will be published bynSt. Martin’s Press in January.nIntermediatenFrisbeenby fames P. DegnannBegin Herenby Jacques BarzunnChicago: Universitynof Chicago Press;n216 pp., $24.95nJacques Barzun, for neariy half ancentury, has been telling us what isnwrong with our schools and what wenmight do to improve them. This hencontinues to do in his most recent book,nBegin Here.nPointing out that American schoolsnhave long been bad and are gettingnworse; that from grade school throughnthe university, they regularly graduatenstudents incompetent in reading, writing,nand counting; and that there aren60 million illiterate in America today,ndespite the enormous sums of moneynwe spend on education, Barzun, in thisncollection of 15 essays and speeches,ncastigates the rotten teaching of basicnsubjects, the inadequate training ofnteachers, the overuse of multiplenchoice tests, the extravagant waste ofnmoney and time on “opulent sportsnprograms” and other “ornaments,”nand the notion that novelties andn”innovations . . . gimmicks andngadgetry” — such as television — contributentoward any real improvement innlearning.nBarzun also attacks, as he has forn