THE ASSAULT CONTINUES

Another affair? Read the Washington Post‘s account of Gary Condit’s alleged affair with another young woman. Can you find anything in it relevant to the possible death of Chandra Levy? I can’t. The most ominous suggestion is that Condit once told his former paramour never to talk about the relationship again. This is seen as some sort of dark threat. It sounds like boiler-plate affair talk to me. Now, look. I know plenty of people suspect Condit killed Chandra or had something to do with it. But being a serial philanderer does not make you a murderer. Thank God Bill Safire gets this today. Maybe he’ll help stem the prurient tide. Nor, as Mickey Kaus suggests, does having sado-masochistic sex with neckties (no accounting for taste) suggest to anyone but the already convinced that this is relevant because Condit could have killed Chandra in a sexual accident. Do we need to know the kind of underwear he has in case it turns out he strangled her with it? What if it turns out that none of these things is relevant? How does Condit get his privacy back? He can’t and he won’t. And his punishment by media has nothing to do with his possible culpability in the Levy case and everything to do with the feeding frenzy of a slow news summer.