Condit-Country is lost. The media blitz, orchestrated by his own field generals, blew it up. It has been taken over by people who have turned it into a theme park and renamed it Witless-World.
It is hard to tell what Condit and his Crew thought was going to happen following Thursday night's interview, Friday's People Magazine interview, and Monday's Newsweek piece. But this couldn't have been it.
Minority-Leader-For-Life, Dick Gephardt, who was at a Condit Watch Party in St. Louis, couldn't get into the local paper fast enough to say that he was "disappointed" in Condit's performance and needs to "talk to my colleagues.... We're going to have to deal with the issues," according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch piece by Jo Mannies.
One of the "issues" one suspects, is Condit's removal from the House Intelligence Committee; a move, you may remember, which was called for in this very column (A Question of Privilege) exactly one month ago.
Condit, in a Newsweek interview with Michael Isikoff, complained about Connie Chung's handling of the ABC interview. Hello? Gary? You can't rhymes-with-witch about Chung. Your guys chose her!
Sidebar: I don't understand how news organizations allow interview subjects to "shop" interviewers. It seems to me that a news outlet should simply say: You decide the time and place; We'll decide who shows up to do it.
I'm not clear on this decision to have Condit do an interview with Isikoff who is THE premier magazine investigative reporter in the country - the world, maybe.
If Condit thought he got tangled up by Connie Chung, what made him think that sitting down with Isikoff for 90 minutes was going to be the political equivalent of working out the kinks in his swing at the driving range?
This is how you know it's over. As part of that interview, Isikoff asks Condit: "How about going out of your apartment building separately so that people didn't see the two of you [Condit and Levy] together, go to restaurants?"
"I think we had dinner possibly one time and I met her at [the
restaurant] Tryst. That's the only time I can remember going
out to dinner and she met me there. I've been to dinner with
several people, females at Tryst."
When the political gods are smiling upon you, it becomes public knowledge you have had dinner with "several people, females" at restaurants named something like "Virtuous," or "Chaste," or, "My-Wife-is-Meeting-Us-Here-at-Eight-Thirty." When the gods are angry with you, they make you have dinner with women to whom you are not married at a place named "Tryst."
Abbe Lowell, in a very testy interview with Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet" yesterday, didn't even try to explain the watch-box-to-the-trash-bin-in-Alexandria ruse except to tell Russert "You know, it looks terrible. It is - the perception is awful. It was a dumb thing to do. But it has nothing to do with Chandra Levy. It has nothing to do with the search. It has nothing to do with anything that had relevance that day."
Ok, counselor, taken as read. Then what DID it have to do with?
At least he didn't try to push ahead on the "reporters were rummaging through my garbage" story which truly was garbage and DESERVED to be tossed into a trash bin.
Boy have I made up for no Friday SDR today!
- A link to the transcript of the "Meet the
Press" interview;
- Maps to, and a review of, Tryst.
- A link to a clip of the Mullmeister on
MSNBC Thursday night.
- A Catchy Caption.
All on the Secret Decoder Ring.
The water off New Smyrna Beach, Florida has been closed to surfers since last Thursday because of a minor
outbreak of shark attacks on human beings. A ninth surfer was attacked about a mile south of the no-swim zone
yesterday, bringing the total of tasty morsels to 19 for the year.
Nevertheless, according to Sandra Frederick, Southeast Volusia bureau chief of the Daytona Beach News-Journal, "officials will re-evaluate the situation � and could reopen the surf Monday."
This, perhaps, because the alternative activity the surfers have adopted during the ban - Land Mine Volleyball - may prove, in the near term, to be too dangerous.
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