Okay look I tried

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Okay, look, I tried! I did my best! I tried to think about the Patients’ Bill of Rights. But the flesh is weak. So we’re back to Gary Condit.

A few points. Mickey Kaus speculated a couple days ago that Condit’s obtuse denials of an affair might both be logical and the best evidence of his innocence of any involvement in Levy’s disappearance. I gave this theory a lot of thought. And he may be right. But one of the things that weighs against it is what I’ll call ‘story creep.’

If there were some plan or play book to Condit’s response to all this you’d think he’d have … well, you’d think he’d have a play book. One story that he’d stick with. But each passing day brings some fresh hemorrhage or drift in Condit’s spin or storyline.

First they were just buds; then she was infatuated with him; then … well, maybe there was something going on but hell that don’t have a damn thing to do with it!

And all the while this downhill slide is accompanied by a daily barrage of information from some bizarro world where DC’s Du Pont Circle neighborhood is a hotbed of abductions — where you’re about as likely to get kidnapped as you would be if you were an eco-tourist in the jungles of the Philippines. And there’s a lot of other whacky ideas emanating from those ‘close’ to the Condit camp, as they say.

For better or worse, Condit doesn’t seem like a man with a plan. He seems like a real-life version of that pitiful goof William H. Macy played in Fargo, a hapless rube who finds himself in a terrible situation, and whose desparate efforts to break free just drag him further out onto a slip-n-slide of ridiculousness and tragedy.

A while back Tim Noah tried to push a new phrase from The Sopranos: ‘Disrepecting the Bing.’ Disrespecting the Bing basically meant copping to an insignificant offense in order to avoid taking responsibility for, or admitting to, a far graver one.

The on-going Condit melodrama puts me in the mind of another apt phrase: looking for the ‘real killers.’ A la OJ, to look for the ‘real killers’ means to toss up cockamamie and transparently moronic diversions in a hopeless effort to draw attention away from your own misdeeds. Robert Blake was ‘looking for the real killers’ before the Chandra-Condit case knocked him out of the headlines.

Probably all Gary Condit is guilty of is an ill-considered affair with an intern, and some very bad luck. But, metaphorically at least, he’s definitely looking for the ‘real killers’.

The latest news is that Condit called Levy’s parents over the weekend only to have them refuse to take his call, referring him instead to their newly-hired lawyer. As Condit’s press secretary told ABCNews.com, after seeing the Levy’s broadcast interview, Condit “called to take them up on their request that he talk to them … Condit saw Susan Levy on television and he decided to call her on Saturday morning because he sensed she wanted to reach out to him.” Reach out to him? Please!

Unless I missed something they never asked him to talk to them. They asked him to come clean, address publicly what he knew. The call seems pretty obviously like a stunt (presumably cooked up by Condit’s advisors) to either make the Levy’s look bad by refusing to talk with him or allowing him to sidle up to them in the public mind by having a heart to heart with the family.

P.S. Next up, the Patients’ Bill of Rights. I promise! Really!

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