On Star Trek they

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On Star Trek they call it ‘synaptic breakdown,’ the fatal, final, flickering of neural firing that marks the collapse of coherent brain wave activity and the onset of death. Media marathons often end in a similar manner. And the long-running Gary Condit-Chandra Levy saga has apparently arrived at just that point.

Need some examples? Well, how about Greta Van Susteren’s show tonight about how the foreign media is reporting and interpreting the Chandra story … (Hmmmmmm. What do the Sri Lankans make of all this. The Nepalese?) Or the running stories across all the cable nets today about parents getting leery about sending their fetching daughters off to be interns in Washington (Hint: don’t do the fifty-something pol, and you’ll be just fine).

Yesterday’s apparently-now -discredited report of Levy’s body being buried down on a military base near Richmond, Virginia seems less like the much-awaited third act and much more like one of those cliched scenes from a mid-century Hollywood melodrama where the on-the- edge-of-death hospital patient rouses him or herself for one final revealing utterance before finally giving up the ghost entirely.

There are a few good things out there worth watching still. Larry King has the wonderful Lisa DePaulo on tonight. Her much awaited Talk magazine article will be out next week (you’ll definitely hear some new and revealing info from her tonight). For at least part of the show Lisa will have to share the stage with the motley crew of Garegos, Olson, Epstein, et.al., who have little if any idea of any of the facts of the case. But Lisa is one of the few folks in this whole media circus who is chock full of info and has a pretty clear understanding of everything that is knowable about the case.

There’s certainly more facts to discover about this whole ugly, sorrowful story. And no end of leads worth following up. But the prospect of ever truly knowing what happened to Chandra Levy is beginning to look distant indeed. And the chances of justice for whomever did her harm look bleaker still. We may never know with absolute certainty whether Chandra Levy is alive or dead. The fate of this story, though, looks much more clear.

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