Stuck indifferently in the back of some online news round-ups was the story last week that The Washington Cops seem to be on the verge of solving the murder of Chandra Levy. Like a lot of random killings, it was a tough nut to crack, and has spent years as the world's most publicized cold case. Well, first publicized, then forgotten.
How few revisit the painful memory of the Washington Media Establishment's revolting performance in the summer of 2001? There would not be even a cursory self review in the press, they switched into patriotic mode and began their prize-winning stories about how the Towers fell in the new era of journalistic responsibility.
A few had taken notice of the Press's dubious Gary Condit fever. The occasionally astute Richard Cohen of the Washington Post called the coverage "pornographic." This may be the one example on record of the libeling of Ron Jeramy, as we were nightly treated to the then inescapable Ann Coulter explaining how the press was doing a "yeoman's job" of covering the "scandal." Eager to distract attention from the heavy lifting they had done in installing the then unpopular President, the Press went crazy for a new scandal of Democratic Sex. Some right wing commentators put it rather baldly, this was just a continuation of their plan to clean up Washington that started with their party-line impeachment.
Though details aren't public, Condit was able to quietly win some no doubt substantial settlements from news organizations that had implicated him in the murder. In advertising and revenue they may still consider themselves on the winning end. After 9-11, of course, it was shoved not onto the back burner but right off the stove; and the villain-making business of Gary Condit became they equally idiotic hero-making business of George W Bush.
Leading the way, up and down the line, was the already long since "changed" shlock journalist Christopher Hitchens, whose last two Nation Pieces before 9-11 were on the Levy case. Tying it all to his previous stellar journalism, he coined the hilarious phrase "Clindit", which sounded kind of like Clitoris, you see...this from the man who once said the Marx Brothers weren't funny.
By the time Americans gave there tacit, we-don't-really-have-a-choice approval to the invasion of Iraq they had been softened up by years of shlock journalism. Hitchens main complaint was with the Washington Police, who refused to arrest an innocent man for the murder of Chandra Levy on the cowardly technicality that there was no evidence. Indeed, the Washington Police Chief was eventually hounded into publicly criticizing Condit for not giving them more information — information it is now obvious was never his to give.
Hitchens's literary pretension gives these guttersnipes an air of respectability when he drags them on for another chat session. If we are all of us in the gutter, these are the ones with eyes fixed on the sewer.
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Hitch on Condit: 'Clindit', The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 7, 2001 Modesto Man, The Nation, Sept. 6, 2001
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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