Three high-profile politicians are currently involved in potentially criminal events.
One, U.S. congressman Gary Condit, had an affair with an intern, Chandra Levy, who
subsequently disappeared without a trace 13 weeks ago.  Where she is, whether she’s alive,
and what happened to her remains unanswered as I write this.  A second politician, Philip
Giordano, the mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut, and unsuccessful candidate for the U.S.
Senate, is charged with sexually molesting a child under 16.  According to reports, the
mayor is suspecting of sexually abusing a number of children as young as 9 and 10; he’s
also facing a plethora of campaign corruption and fraud charges that may stretch back as far
as 1995.  A third case involves another U.S. representative; aide Lori Klausutis was found
dead in the Florida offices of Rep. Joe Scarborough on the morning of July 20; she had been
dead for nearly two days.  Cause of death is still under investigation.  Klausutis, like Levy,
was a fitness buff who was reportedly in the prime of health when she suddenly died.

The Condit-Levy case is front-page news in most major media outlets and prime discussion
fodder for just about every political commentary show on the airwaves.  Condit is being
compared to Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and Jeffrey Dahmer, among others.  Mobs of
reporters and photographers dog Condit’s steps and camp out on the Levy family’s lawn.
The GOP released the results of a poll they sponsored that claimed to show the Condit case
was resulting in national disenchantment with the Democratic Party.  Meanwhile, the
Scarborough-Klausutis case is hardly being reported at all; the few news articles I could find
online are from regional Florida papers such as the Northwest Florida Daily News and the
Pensacola News Journal.  The second of two articles I could find in the NFDN archives is
headlined “Klausutis’s Death Not Suspicious” and makes it clear that Scarborough is not
considered a suspect (the first reported the death and emphasized that Scarborough was not
under suspicion).  Another article, from July 21, reported the death along with the police’s
immediate assertions that Klausutis died of natural causes, and that Scarborough, again, was
not a suspect.  The Giordano charges are apparently getting statewide attention in Connecticut
– the Hartford Courant, for one, is following the story very closely – but it seems most national
media outlets are all but ignoring the situation.

A Google search for “Lori Klausutis” and “Joe Scarborough” turned up one document, a HUD listing.
No news articles.  A similar search for “Philip Giordano” and “sexual misconduct” also turned up one
document, a Roll Call election preview.  Again, no news articles.  A search for “Gary Condit” and
“Chandra Levy” turned up 8,410 documents; the first results were variously titled “A Sex Scandal?,”
“The Naked Truth about Gary Condit,” “Don Juan in Hell,” “Gary Condit is Acting Just Like Bill Clinton,”
and so forth.  On today’s CNN.com front page, Condit-Levy is a featured article, with film and a timeline.
No mention is made of either the Scarborough or Giordano cases; the Giordano case is the last entry
in the “More News” links on the US News page, while I had to search the CNN archives for any
mention of the Scarborough case – no articles were listed on the death of Lori Klausutis, and a single
article appears about Scarborough’s announcement in May that he would resign his office due to
“chronic back pain” and “personal soul-searching.”  (Not only did Scarborough not resign,
he now claims he will not run for further office, apparently because of reports that he
impregnated one of his own aides.)  America Online’s national news is full of the latest on
Condit’s interviews with the FBI and DC police, while I scanned the first 200 articles in
their archives without finding a listing for either the Scarborough or Giordano cases.

Call me biased, but I see a disparity here.  One case – a vanished intern who had had an affair with
a U.S. congressman – is getting blanket coverage on the national stage.  Two other cases – a corrupt
mayor sexually molesting children and an aide found inexplicably dead in a U.S. congressman’s office
– get virtually no coverage.  Why?  Well, let’s see. Gary Condit, focus of saturation coverage by the
national media, is a Democrat. Scarborough and Giordano, ignored by the media, are Republicans.
Think that might have something to do with the media’s selective coverage?
We can’t prove it, but we can sure think it.

Rush Limbaugh is spending hours a day roaring and fulminating about Gary Condit and his
alleged complicity in the Levy disappearance.  You’d think he’d be just as harsh about a
mayor and Senate candidate who molests little children, but apparently he doesn’t talk about
it.  Fox News and MSNBC are giving viewers daily barrages of opinion on the Levy case.
Isn’t it even more suspicious that an aide to a congressman is found mysteriously dead in his
office, especially in light of the fact that said congressman has decided not to run again
because of his affair and subsequent impregnation of an unnamed aide?  Why isn’t Sean
Hannity regaling us with conspiracy theories about Joe Scarborough and the possibility he
had Klausutis murdered to keep her mouth shut?  Bob Dornan goes on O’Reilly’s show to
talk about the Condit case and ends up yowling about Clinton being a draft dodger who had
no business being commander-in-chief.  Hmmm, I don’t see Alan Dershowitz publicly
speculating about the connections between Joe Scarborough and George W.

On Larry King Live, media pundit Nancy Grace quotes directly from Condit’s initial interview
with the police – an interview that hasn’t been released yet.  Can you say “fabricated quotes?”
Paula Zahn is shuttling psychics on and off of her show to tell us just how Levy died.
Maybe we should get Miss Cleo on the case.  A crazed Pentecostal preacher made a spurious
claim that Condit had an affair with his 18-year old daughter (his allegation made headlines,
his admission that he made the whole thing up hardly appeared at all).  And Rush regales us
with the Darrel Condit-Roger Clinton connection: “Gary Condit is to Bill Clinton as Mini-Me is
to Mike Myers. The parents of Chandra Levy now want the cops to start looking
into Condit's brother's behavior. We all know the Roger Clinton story, so there may be
something to learn there."  Say what?  We know both Clinton and Condit had affairs, and we
know that both brothers have had tangles with the law, so this suggests…what?  That Gary
Condit is a murderer?  Run that by me again?  And even better, this somehow reflects on
Bill Clinton?  What we aren’t hearing is that of every woman who disappears in America, a
third of them disappear from the streets of Washington, D.C.  Is it only the ones who are
connected with Democratic lawmakers who get the press?

And I saw yesterday on “Hardball” that only now, 13 weeks after Levy’s disappearance, are the
local cops bothering to question the 20 or so identified sex offenders living in Levy’s neighborhood.
You think they might be worth questioning?  Of course, the pundits blew past that little tidbit to
get back on the topic of Condit’s alleged complicity.  Oh yeah.  (Check The Daily Howler’s
Web site for more info on just how bizarre, and how erroneous, the nation’s media pundits
have been on the Condit case.  As they say, “howling ignorance of basic facts is a staple of
Tabloid Nation. In Tabloid Nation, pandering phonies like Zahn and Matthews go on the air
each night rubbing their thighs, shedding wet tears and telling the world how much they
want to find Chandra.  Meanwhile, anyone who follows their work in detail sees that they
frequently don’t know elementary facts – facts that any journalist would know if he had
made any effort to study the case.”  It would be nice if, during their 24/7 coverage of
everything Condit, they’d actually get some of their facts right.  But we’ve seen this all
before.  Sometimes the facts just don’t cooperate with the need to tar them damn
Demoncrats.  And isn’t it interesting that the same pundits could give a hoot in hell about
finding out how Lori Klausutis died, or publicly sympathizing with those brutalized children.
No, it’s All Condit All The Time.)

To my mind, the saturation coverage of the Condit case is all about the connections with the
Democratic Party and that icon of political sleaziness, Bill Clinton.  Every time media
pundits like O’Reilly and Limbaugh talk about Chandra Levy the “intern,” they’re hoping
that the public will make the connection with Clinton’s own intern problems and with the
Democrats as a whole.  Am I defending Gary Condit?  Hardly.  Condit has to be a prime
suspect in the case, and his dodgy behavior with the FBI and police investigators is
reprehensible.  Given the choice between voting for Condit and, say, B-1 Bob Dornan, I’d
shoot the polling machine first.  People are right to be outraged with Condit’s attempts to
duck out of cooperating with the cops, and the cops’ own refusal to name Condit as a
suspect.  But what’s with the Joe Scarborough situation?  Every news report I’ve seen on the
subject says that she died of unknown causes, and that Scarborough is in no way considered
a suspect.  Oh really?  Scarborough is leaving office over his own affairs with his own aides,
he’s even alleged to have impregnated an aide who has yet to be identified, and now one
turns up dead in his own offices?  Isn’t Scarborough’s possible involvement even worth
considering?  Why aren’t Rush, Hannity, O’Reilly, et al howling with outrage over
Scarborough’s “coddling” by local law enforcement?  And Lord knows no one approves of
child molesters.  So where’s the public outrage over Philip Giordano’s alleged atrocities?
The same pundits who are crucifying Condit with virtually no evidence are refusing to touch
either Scarborough or Giordano.

Let’s close with a little exercise.  For the name “Joe Scarborough,” substitute “Richard
Gephardt” or any other Democratic representative you like.  Try to imagine Rush’s reaction;
apoplectic would hardly cover it.  “Dead!” he’d scream.  “Dead in the man’s very own
offices!  How do they know she died of natural causes?  No one’s released an autopsy report
yet.  And think about our boy already deciding to leave office over allegedly – allegedly, ha
ha – getting one of his aides pregnant!  Was this poor woman carrying this man’s child?
Does anyone else think that he might have something to do with it?  Is this unfortunate
young woman’s blood on this fiendish Democrat’s hands?  We’ll be right back.”  Now, for
the name “Philip Giordano,” substitute, say, “Richard Daley.”  The media barrage would be
relentless.  We’d hear nothing but tale after tale about how Daley was stuffing his hands
down little children’s pants.  As we should be hearing about that (alleged) bastard Giordano.
And that (maybe) murderer Scarborough.  But we’re not.  And that tells me the driving force
behind the media’s obsession with the Condit case, along with its failure to acknowledge the
Scarborough and Giordano cases, is Condit’s political affiliation.  Too bad he didn’t join the
Republican Party when he was asked.  No one would be paying any mind to him, and both
he and the vanished Levy would be a blip on the national media’s radar.

Liberal media, my ass.

Copyright ©2001 Black Max