Russia and China have signed a "mutual friendship treaty", supposedly to counteract the dominance of the United States. President Bush’s energy plan is about to be debated in the House. The Middle East remains a powder keg with a short fuse. So what’s everybody discussing around the water cooler at work? The Chandra Levy/Gary Condit scandal, of course. As a semi-professional member of the working press, union rules require that I make some commentary on the matter. So here goes.

The story actually breaks down into three topics: the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy, the rolling series of bimbo eruptions for California Congressman Gary Condit, and the inevitable round of hand-wringing by the national press over whether they’re covering the story too much.

At first, Condit described Levy as "only a good friend" and denied that there was any romantic relationship. Then, literally out of the clear blue sky, Condit was ambushed by a flight attendant who said that she had had an affair with him and that he subsequently asked her to lie about their relationship. In fact, she said this a lot, to anyone who would listen, including but not limited to Larry King. Next, Levy’s aunt, Linda Zamsky, dropped the bombshell that her niece had confided in her about an affair with Condit.

Then things got really weird. The Levy’s gardener, who happens to be a Pentecostal minister, confided to the Levys (and eventually to the press, of course) that his daughter, now 26, had had an affair with Condit when she was at the tender but still legal age of 18.

Needless to say, there are a lot of unanswered questions in this matter. The biggest one, of course, is where is Chandra Levy. But the ones I’ve been asking are:

• What is it with these girls from California that they seem to blithely confess the most intimate details of their sex lives to older female relatives? I mean, first Monica Lewinsky stashes the incriminating stained dress with her Mom, now this. Linda Zamsky, with an eerie matter of factness, reported that Chandra had revealed "intimate details" of her affair with Condit. As a female colleague of mine (a good Southern girl with proper raising) noted, "If I’d have talked about something like that to my aunt, she’d have reached through the phone and yanked a knot in me."

• What does this guy Condit have that so many women not only seem to fall for him, they and their families are anxious to let the world know about it? I know I’m working with a different set of hormones here, but the guy looks like the actor William H. Macy might look if he’d come out of the oven too soon. Whatever it is, however, it seems to be working for him. Maybe the DC police should just put out a notice that every female who hasn’t slept with Gary Condit should just assemble in the parking lot of the police station at a certain time, just so those thirty or so could be weeded out.

• Does anybody, including Condit, really believe that the Congressman is not a suspect in the disappearance? I don’t care what the police say for the papers. When you’re questioned three times, they question your wife, the cops search your apartment, they get a DNA sample, and they talk about having you take a polygraph test…face it, Bubba, you’re a suspect. Time to get rid of that yapping little terrier you call a lawyer and get on the phone to Johnnie Cochran.

• There’s been a lot of criticism of the national media for its relentless coverage of the whole mess. Some of it has come from the media itself in an endless round of self-flagellating discussions on the roundtable segments of Sunday morning TV shows. As this column has demonstrated, I am no apologist for the press. But what would have happened had the press killed a story about a Democratic congressman whose mistress disappeared? I suspect I know the answer to this one: it would still be all over talk radio and the Internet’s Drudge Report, except the story would then be "why is the press covering up for a Democrat?"

COPYRIGHT 2001 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.