Sex, lies, and Chandra Levy
Just one more act in the corporate media circus that dazzles us away from the real issues.

By nessie

As you undoubtedly know, Chandra Levy is missing. I sincerely hope that by the time you read this that she will have surfaced, that she will be well, that she will have a reasonable explanation for where she has been, and that she doesn't tell us what it is – because, to be quite frank, it's none of our business. She is a grown woman. She has a perfect right to disappear without explanation should she so choose. That she may or may not have slept with a politician should have no bearing whatsoever on her innate right to privacy.

Unfortunately, this outcome to the case is, at best, highly unlikely. In all probability, there has indeed been foul play, just as the press insinuates. In all certainty, we can be assured that the case will soak up print ink and bandwidth for a long time to come. The version of the news that is dished out by the corporate media is always littered with lurid tales of murder, mayhem, kidnapping, and sex. If it bleeds, as the saying goes, it leads. This is mass mind control at its finest: As long as we have these sort of stories to focus on, how likely are we to notice the stories that really matter?

Oh, sure, Chandra Levy's disappearance matters to the people involved. That a representative may have been somehow involved makes the story relevant to the public, at least of his home district. But every minute of the six-o'clock news that is devoted to this sort of tale is a minute not devoted to issues that affect us all. Bread and circuses kept the Roman public fat, dumb, and happy for centuries. This was not lost on subsequent generations of leaders. The Chandra Levy story is just one more act in the corporate media circus that dazzles us daily. Responsible journalists would present it, if at all, in perspective. At the very least, they would examine it objectively and not focus solely on the safe and easy angle of extramarital, intergenerational sex. But alas.

Since the representative in question is a Democrat, the right-wing media are particularly vocal. If he were a Republican, we could expect the left-wing to do the same. The unending hypocrisy of the left and the right taking turns, as they do, calling each other's kettle black, makes me think more of tag-team wrestling than it does anything else. So please don't take what I am about to say here as a partisan position. I'm no more a leftist than I am a rightist. I think for myself. If you have one lick of sense, so do you. When the right is correct about something, I agree with it. When the left is correct about something, I agree with it. When, as is usually the case, they are both wrong, I say so, and in no uncertain terms. Better to tell the truth as you see it than to adhere to any party line. Left wing or right wing, it's the same bird. Better we should ignore the wings and look out for the claws and the droppings. The droppings are dropping thick and fast these days. The media are even more splattered and crusted than usual. It will take a good deal of scraping on our part to get to the truth.

Recently Judicial Watch radio called on former FBI agent Robert Ressler for "expert" opinion on the Levy case. When the FBI burns babies alive on TV, the right-wing media correctly lambaste them. But when they criticize Democrats, suddenly their agents and assets are "experts" whose opinions can be trusted. This is hypocrisy of the very kind of which they themselves so often, and often correctly, accuse the left. Pot, kettle, black. Even if we give Ressler credit for no longer being with the bureau, for Judicial Watch to present him with his FBI background as his bona fides is a hypocritical about-face for an organization that has in the past spoken out against the bureau's long, rich, thick history of domestic atrocities.

Ressler served 16 years in the FBI's behavioral science unit. He is a self-professed expert on serial murders and sex crimes who now runs his own Virginia-based firm, the Department of Behavioral Sciences. His work, we are told, was the basis for the blood-curdling thriller Silence of the Lambs. Ressler claims that the case will not be solved until Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., comes clean about the true nature of his relationship with the 24-year-old California woman.

"Apparently, Congressman Condit has been ... one of the people who was linked to the victim prior to her disappearance," Ressler told Judicial Watch. "From that standpoint, a full investigation should be conducted around Congressman Condit."

Ressler suggested that Condit may actually be hurting himself by refusing to reveal details of his relationship with Levy. "If, in fact, he's truly innocent, he should be eliminated very quickly, and then any improper relationships or anything of that nature becomes secondary," Ressler said. "But we have to get beyond him to get to a realistic suspect in the case."

This is a roundabout way of saying that Condit should be considered a suspect solely because there is some indication that he and Levy may have slept together. This is exactly the sort of thing one expects to hear from Judicial Watch and their ilk when a Democrat is the one in question. This is not to say that Ressler's take on the case is entirely without merit: when foul play against a woman is one of the possibilities, the men in her personal life should always be the first suspects. But when politicians are involved, personal lives are treated much differently than they are in the cases of ordinary citizens. As Ressler correctly pointed out, investigation of Vincent Foster's still-mysterious death has been greatly hampered by widespread reluctance to delve sufficiently into his alleged romantic relationship with Hillary Clinton.

We must take care when considering such cases as Foster's or Levy's to distinguish between the actual investigations and the way they are portrayed in the media. This is particularly true when sex is an angle. The right-wing media correctly chastise the left-wing media for their "Democrats can do no wrong" approach to certain sex (and other) scandals. But by the same token, they themselves grossly distort the role of their own favorite politicos in such matters. To hear the Republicans and their friends tell it, sex with interns began with Slick Willy, and Republicans keep their pants zipped and their hands to themselves at all times. Nothing could be further from the truth. Face it: people have sex. It's a fact of life. There's nothing unnatural about it. Get used to it. It's nothing new, and it is certainly not a partisan issue.

How short they must expect our memories to be. Sex scandals have been the mainstay of American politics at the very least since Sally Hemmings came to the attention of Thomas Jefferson's enemies. Welcome to history class. Your assignment, should you chose to accept it, is to, for once, stop relying on experts and do a little research on your own. Here's a question to get you started. What 19th-century presidential race featured the campaign slogan, "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha"? Look it up. Learn a little.

But we don't have to go back that far. Do you remember a woman named Annabel Battistella, a.k.a Fanne Fox, the Argentine Firecracker? She was a stripper who hit the front page of every newspaper in the country when park police stopped a car that was driving erratically with its lights off. Out stepped an Arkansas member of Congress named Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House of Representatives' Ways and Means Committee.

He was intoxicated, and his face was scratched. His companion, Fox, ran from the car and jumped into the tidal basin near the Jefferson Memorial. Park police had to wade into the pond and rescue the reluctant Miss Fox. It was a scandal that fed the ravenous appetite of newsmen and columnists for many months.

A few years later Wayne Hayes, chairman of the House Administration Committee, was accused of hiring Elizabeth Ray on his staff to serve as his personal mistress. Typically, Rep. Hayes denied that Ray was ever his mistress. Unfortunately for Hayes, Ms. Ray confided to the press that she was no secretary, then added: "I can't type. I can't file. I can't even answer the phone." Hayes resigned a short time later.

Then there was John Jenrette. He quit after being convicted of bribery as a result of the infamous Abscam sting operation. After the scandal his estranged wife posed seminude for Playboy. She told the magazine that she and Jenrette once had sex on the front steps of the U.S. Capitol. Apparently this sort of thing is not confined to the Oval Office.

In 1990 the House publicly reprimanded Massachusetts representative Barney Frank for, among other things, using his political influence to fix parking tickets for a male prostitute with whom he was "friends." It hasn't stopped Frank from being reelected consistently.

And who could forget Gary Hart. At one time, Hart was the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Then the Miami Herald produced pictures of Miss Rice and the senator fooling around onboard a boat appropriately named "Monkey Business." Needless to say, Hart dropped out of the race.

At his confirmation hearings current Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas was accused by law professor Anita Hill of sexual harassment. He was confirmed anyway. Hill was subject to considerable slander because of her stand. Recently, David Brock, the author of a best-selling book, The Real Anita Hill (Free Press, 1993), that attacked her has disavowed its premise and now says that he lied in print to protect the reputation of Justice Clarence Thomas.

Neither politicians having sex nor people lying about it in public is anything new. News, by definition, is when something new happens. So why is the press so obsessed with Chandra Levy's sex life? The right-wing press, and the right wing in general, always appear to be as obsessed with other people's sex lives as leftists (allegedly) appear to be with their own. But another explanation is possible. Perhaps we should examine it.

Chandra Levy was, after all, an intern with the Bureau of Prisons. To the astute investigator, that should ring more than a few bells. Could it be that her disappearance has nothing whatsoever to do with her sex life? Could it be that she stumbled upon something she was not supposed see? Could it be that the journalists of this country are pursuing not the easier or the most lascivious story but the safer one? Personally, I'm not looking any further into this possibility, because I know what happens to people who find things they are not supposed to see, because I don't want to end up like Danny Casolaro, because it's ever so cozy here in the bunker, and because nobody is paying me enough stick my neck out that far.

What's your excuse?

The nessie files runs alternate Mondays.

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