This whole thing really makes me angry. For various reasons.
A)Why should Condit admit to having an affair with Levy to the public? It’s not anybody’s business, and it certainly won’t bring Levy home faster.
B)Connie Chung wanted to prove herself again. She has been doing a lot of interviews lately in order to get back her career. She was so concerned with making herself look good by asking “hard” questions and “sticking to her guns” that I think she looked like a fool.
C)On the nightly news, everybody is discussing Condit and his wife, and what he’s doing. But for every ten references to Condit, I maybe see one reference to the actual investigation. I think the American Public has really lost touch with what is important here.
D)Condit doesn’t have to submit to a lie-detector test, he didn’t have to allow the police officers to search his home, and he most certainly does not have to defend himself to the American Public. If I were him, I would have waited until they had enough proof to get a warrant to search my home, at the very least. Maybe to the 600,000 people who have the power to elect him he should do damage control, but the way the whole country thinks that they deserve to know every little thing about his life is horrible.
E)For once I agree with George W. Bush. He didn’t watch the interviews because he says he’s not concerned with gossip, only with getting Levy home. I say, “Amen!”
I really didn’t mind Connie asking him several times about the affair. I thought she made it perfectly obvious that he had a creepy tendency to repeat his same script. “I’ve been married 34 years, I haven’t been a perfect man…”. Had she not asked him that same question repeatedly, it would not have been so glaringly obvious (at least in that one thing) that he was following a carefully crafted script.
Really, I think she did OK. There was only going to be so much you can do with a wind-up aging Ken Doll anyway. She only had half an hour, and I noticed he did “fillibuster” a few times, and try to get the subject off track. She was never going to have time to ask all the questions that needed to be asked.
Spider Woman, I am beginning to agree with you on the Chappaquidick. thing. I used to not think there was anything to the tabloid gossip, but his behavior was so suspicious and bizarre. If he were truly innocent and didn’t know anything, he wouldn’t need to have his lawyers design special answers to simple questions about her disappearance, or whether she were pregnant, etc. Very bizarre. Alarm bells going off everywhere for me.
Why would Chandra Levy even want to have an affair with him? Why would anybody? That hairstyle is horrendous and I fully agree with the creepy aging scarecrow look. The very idea of going to bed with a scarecrow, Tales from the Crypt references aside, is scary.
[sub]Yes, I know this is the most shallow post of the thread, and I don’t care! :)[/sub]
Agreed. We don’t HAVE to know. But it is interesting that he lied to the police about the affair. (And he did lie.)
First off, Condit’s camp asked her for the interview. She had no power over who he’d choose, she ended up being the lucky one. Had she not asked “hard” questions, everyone would have accused her of “softballing” him. Can’t win for losing. I am sure she was only doing what her bosses (and most viewers) wanted her to do.
The only reason this tragic case is in the public eye is that there is a Congressman involved. I am sure the American Public knows what Chandra looks like, and if she comes in to buy coffee at their local Dairy Queen, I’m sure they’ll manage to still recognize her and call “America’s Most Wanted”. The fact that for a few days the Big News (on a slow August news day) is the Condit interview isn’t going to amount to much in the way of the investigation. Unless you think that all the police on the case have suddenly stopped looking for her because of the media coverage over Condit.
Which makes it more bizarre that he did. Why dredge up his own polygrapher, make it so he “passed” the test, and then proclaim to the world that he “passed”? He should have known that the DC police were not going to be satisfied, and would want him to submit to another one. In for a penny, in for a pound. Once he’s offered polygraph tests legitimacy by submitting to one, he’s going to look suspicious for refusing to submit to a police-administered test. He should have said that he questioned polygraphs (a legitimate concern) and stuck to his guns. Would have been more consistent.
No, not unless he wants to get re-elected. Ah - there’s the rub. Obviously he DOES want to get re-elected. Hence all these interviews.
If I recall correctly, he did make an oath to the United States of America, not just Modesto, California. We all have an interest. And, had he behaved in a completely different manner from the beginning, none of this would have happened. I feel utterly NO sympathy for the man.
I found his interviews facsinating. All his “non-answers” told quite a bit - all sorts of alarm bells going off for me. His supporters in Modesto are dropping like flies.
Cranky, if I ever get into real trouble I want you on my team.
How many years Was he married again?
Theres no way he can make himself seem okay now.
Even if she was foudndand safe, he Still comes across like a jerk.
I think he is into some very kinky sex and he is afraid it will be brought to light.
And as for Connie Chung, why would she ask a question that we already knew the answer to? It was already established that he had a sexual relationship with Levy by the DC police.
She has 30 minutes to grill him and she asks things like , “did you kill her?” “and did you have an affair with her?”
Why didn’t she just lean forward and say “just between you and me…”
I put her right up there with BABA WAWA and Dan “I reported JFK dead 16 minutes before anyone else” Rather as the most incompetent and ridiculous “celebrity” journalists.
Pepper, while in most cases I would agree that the public DOESN’T have the right to know everything about someone they have voted for, that their vote doesn’t include a non privacy clause.
HOWEVER, someone that this man is ‘close to’ is missing. When someone YOU love or just are close to is missing, don’t you do everything to find them?? Wouldn’t that include any info even if it is embarrassing to you? Would you keep harping about ‘your civil liberties being violated’? Would you hire a separate polygraph ‘expert’ [who has already been put in serious doubt because of his expertise being bought in another case, where he showed the guy to be truthful, and it was all lies]
I didn’t think this guy would actually kill or conspire to get rid of his ‘girlfriend’. In fact, BECAUSE he’d had previous affairs, and his wife would’ve had to have known it, would have made this a non issue.
HOWEVER, after watching his twitching mouth, the way his eyes kept shifting, wriggling in his chair, his hands wringing. THIS is an angry man. He was totally unsympathetic, and the stonewalling was incredible.
Then I’ve got to wonder, why lie ON TELEVISION in full view of those he is lying about, WHY??? What has he still to hide?? The Levy’s are lying, Anne Marie Smith is lying, the police are lying… everyone is out of step but Johnny.
The one question that should’ve been asked? ‘Did you know about the security cameras in Chandra’s apartment were erased at the end of each month, did they have anything to do with your waiting the three weeks to be more forthcoming with the police.’
His answer of course would be ‘I’ve been married for 34 years, I’m not a perfect man, and I’ve made some mistakes…’’ blah blah blah.
He claims he didn’t love her, well, THAT was the truth. You could only appear that uncaring about the possible loss of someone you didn’t care one whit for.
BTW, I don’t think that really is a toupee is it???
No - I don’t think it is either. Doesn’t have that “dead squirrell-William Shatner” look to it.
I have been boycotting news all weekend. TVLand had a “TV Western Marathon” - you know, 48 hours of “Gunsmoke”, “Wagon Train”, “Maverick” and “Alias Smith and Jones”. I’m in re-run heaven! I haven’t watched anything (anything) for the last two days.
So - any news? Has Gary dug himself in any deeper? Any more interviews? Any more tidbits of information?
OK, so I spelled “squirrel” wrong. And I should say, I haven’t watch anything else (but Western re-runs) for the last two days. For all I know Gary’s confessed all, or Chandra’s shown up at a Bob’s Big Boy in Pasadena. I have no idea what’s been going on!
“I think the American Public has really lost touch with what is important here.”
—Oh, Pep! You should know by now that the American Public is FAMOUS for “losing touch with what is important here.” Gary Condit is just this week’s bright, shiny object being dangled before our eyes.
I have a gut feeling that this may be the case. I don’t know why, but I do. WAY too much cover-up and secrecy for a non-involved party.
Zette
I wonder if politicians will EVER learn that the good-natured, goofy American public will forgive them ANYTHING if they’ll just 'fess up in an aw-shucks manner.
Had Condit shrugged, laughed in a self-deprecating way, and said, “Yup, we were having great sex—guess I am the world’s unluckiest adulterer, eh, folks?” he’d get re-elected like that. Hell, he could probably have said, “Oops—I panicked and killed her, dumped her body in the woods. Gee, wouldn’t YOU have done the same?” he’d probably win re-election from jail. Jesus, if Marion Barry could win re-election, ANYONE can!
It’s obvious most of you have never been journalists.
If you don’t ask the stupidist, most obvious questions (“did you have an affair with her…did you kill her?”) you’ll get blasted off the face of the earth for “not even asking the stupidist, most obvious questions.” As yosemitebabe notes, you can’t win for losing.
Remember, the agreement between ABC and Condit was that the interview would be unedited. That means we got to see it in its unfolding banality, not with the stupid, most obvious stuff edited out (like you’d get in most broadcast or print interviews.)
A few weeks ago the CBS-owned station in Los Angeles broadcast Dubya’s stem cell address on a split screen with a freeway car chase. It got much higher ratings than any of the other stations broadcasting the speech. Which goes to prove my old adage “As a nation, we don’t get the news we want. We want much worse.”
Any lawyer types on here?? I see that Anne Marie Smith has filed a lawsuit for defamation. I know that you can sue over whatever you please, but she’s suing him because he called her a liar on television. Doesn’t she have to prove either malice or that she’s suffered monetary/ or some kind of damages to win? Wouldn’t she have to have proof that they had an affair, and she hasn’t offered any.
Unless she too, has a little blue dress hiding away somewhere with DNA on it.
kunilou, I don’t agree. There were other questions she could’ve asked that weren’t obvious, redundant, or dead enders. Salon came up with a very good list prior to the interview that they predicted Connie wouldn’t be clever/perceptive/gutsy enough to ask:
Looks like they were right.
Condit is guilty…
Either of A) a crime
or
B) Extraordinary, unadulterated, extreme stupidity.
He just doesn’t and can’t Look innocent.
If it had been someone like Clinton or Lieberman, they would’ve looked so innocent and came across really well.
This guy doesn’t know p.r. very well.