Great Day for Gary Condit

I recounted my story about being in Boston during 9/11 and how I just missed being on AA flight #11 in this blog back in September. One thing I remember clearly that I didn't talk about then. The first phone call I got that morning. I was in a taxi trying to get away from Boston and somehow closer to California. The Hartford Airport Hilton was the place I decided to go until the airports opened and I could get home.

It was Harry Anderson who called me. He didn't even say hello he just said, "This is a great day for Gary Condit." It is the kind of gallows humor we share as friends and I laughed for the first time all morning.

Until flight #11 hit the World Trade Center, and for the summer months before, "the top story" on every news station was the disappearance of Chandra Levy. She was a young intern working in Washington, DC, romantically linked to a Washington Politician . The press was following a California Congressman named Gary Condit around, convinced that his alleged affair with Chandra Levy led to her death.

He was being hounded day and night by reporters. The career and private life as he knew them were over . Although he was never called a suspect by the police, in the eyes of Chandra's parents and the obsessive television watching public, he had killed Chandra and dumped her body somewhere. Isn't that what politicians do with ex-girlfriends?

Mid morning on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 the Gary Condit/Chanda Levy story ended abruptly. It was never mentioned again until yesterday. After eight years of quiet investigation DC detectives caught the guy who actually killed Chandra Levy. He is in jail serving a life sentence for acts of violence against other women. The killer wasn't Gary Condit. It wasn't a political murder or a love triangle gone bad, just a random act of opportunity by a predatory killer.

There won't be any apologies from the press. There won't be any law suits to restore Gary Condit's reputation, He is just another casualty of sorts. An innocent man brought down by our insatiable desire to voyeuristically make real life fit some Hollywood movie script. He probably isn't the last innocent man to be brought down by in a trial by media. With more "i -reporters" Youtube channels and video cameras in every cell phone I have the feeling it is only going to get worse.

I hope it is some sort of closure for the Levy family. And as for Gary Condit, this must be a another great day for him.

As you were,

Jay