It’s really too bad that more missing persons can’t have affairs with their congressmen. There are unfortunately only so many congressmen to go around and not every person who doesn’t arrive home after their nightly fitness club workout can get the opportunity to shine the proverbial “shoes” of our wealthy House and Senate Representatives. Most of our missing persons are reduced to mere faces on bulletin boards and milk cartons. Hell, nowadays, missing children don’t even receive the courtesy of being placed on a milk carton. No sir. Today their faces arrive as junk mail in an individuals mailbox only to be wadded up and used to wipe the resin off a pipe cleaner. At least with the milk carton you’d have to stare at the depressed mug shot and feel some sort of relief that he or she was one less person you’d have to get pissed off at during the day.
This isn’t to say that I have any sort of contempt for Chandra Levy or her parents. I just don’t think its fair to all of the other missing persons who haven’t received a good rogering from an elected official. No one normally hears about the thousands of people who turn up missing each year. Here’s a list of names for you: Connie Lynn Trent, Marci Miligram, Bill McKinley, and Yvonne Lorraine Blank. This is just a smattering of people who mysteriously disappeared over the course of the year 2000. Now go ahead and violently jar these names from your memory, you’ll never hear them again.
But here is a name you’ve heard close to three hundred times by now, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to disappear any time soon: Chandra Levy. You won’t be able to forget this name for months to come because the press is having a field day with this missing woman and her entire family. If Chandra Levy had not had a sexual relationship with the California Representative Garry Condit, she would just be another removable face in the crowd, missed only by her family, and paid no regards to by the police or the media.
I think what really has me steamed about all of this, and never mind that I think Condit is the reason this woman is missing, is the attention paid to this case by the police of Washington D.C. Ordinary citizens don’t usually receive this kind of personal attention when they don’t show up after work on a Tuesday evening. The police have gone well out of their way to help find Chandra Levy by searching Condit’s apartment, searching abandoned buildings around her apartment with cadaver sniffing dogs, and sometime in the coming week, taking DNA samples from Condit and other suspects.
I do have to give a super sized kudos to the Levy family who have done everything in their power to make sure the media keeps their glassy eyes focused directly on this story. They’ve managed to take this everyday missing person case and exploit it for what it is, a media free for all on an adulterous politician. Every informed person in the United States has their daughter’s face temporarily blazoned upon their retinas from watching too much CNN. Larry King is talking about it. Geraldo is talking about it. I’m talking about it. Wolf Blitzer and Greta Van Susteren have devoted every show this week to it. Hell, you can watch CNN Tonight and get this article forced fed to you by a really pretty guy named Bill. Everyone except for CBS News is discussing this story, but don’t worry, they’ll come around too. By exploiting this media frenzy, the Levy Family has kept their daughters name and face in the public eye, and this will hopefully bring their daughter back to them.
Of course I have my own opinions on whether or not they know where she is. 3 scenarios that I have pondered over for some time in my head are as follows:
1) Gary Condit impregnated this young intern and therefore freaked out. He has a wife, kids, and a very solid political career…Condit just can’t have an impregnated intern on his hands, now, if at any time. So he ponders over what to do…and comes to the decision that he must rid himself of this major moral blunder. Of course in politics, two wrongs do make a right, and Condit has Chandra Levy killed. He buys himself just enough time to rid himself of anything having to do with her disappearance by not speaking to the police or the media, and although his career may be over, he walks off, relatively unscathed.
2)Chandra Levy was hopelessly in love with Condit. She told her aunt that she thought the two were going to get married within five years and begin a life together in adulterous bliss. Being a 24 year old woman, her head was filled with romantic thoughts of a life together, and one evening she decided to bring this up to the married man. (The following is a dramatization) “I Love You,” Chandra Levy said. “I’m sorry,” said Condit, “I was just fucking you.” Wildly upset and driven for revenge, the intern takes off and moves in with her ex-boyfriend who lives in the mountains of Colorado. Now, I’m not quite sure about the ex-boyfriend part, but this scenario definitely explains why the Levys have been so damned calm through all of this hoop-lah. It’s almost as if they’re pointing their fingers at one man and one man alone, Gary Condit. Now, if Chandra were my child, I’d have all ten fingers and toes pointed at every mother fucker who ever knew or spent time with my daughter in Washington. They seem to have this master plan, and that makes things fishy.
3)Some crack smoking guy from the ghetto took her and sold her ass for some rock.
Now you must understand that all of this is pure speculation because I am just one ill-informed man sitting in Austin, TX with a bottle of Wild Turkey by his side. Speaking of which…
Ahh…ok now where was I. OH! The problems with the media and the police involvement of this case. We as American’s have become a region of vultures, hoping and praying that we can sink our cadaver loving claws into the belly of a public figure who’s done something morally apprehensible. My main point is that this is no missing persons case. Normal missing persons cases don’t get the CNN treatment. This is about selling commercial spots. This is about the American political culture getting revenge on a Clinton-esque situation by chasing after a lesser known congressman from a wealthy district in California. The case is no longer about Ms. Chandra Levy. It’s about how the media needed a good summer scandal to sell newspapers. It’s about how the Washington Police Department is playing into the hands of the media by subjecting a man who they’ve already exonerated to apartment searches and lie detector tests. American’s love a good scandal and if Chandra is out there reading this (Yeah right) I hope my dear you are getting one hell of a good laugh. If Chandra isn’t out there reading this because there, and the police have so delicately stated it, has been foul play, then I hope more than anything that my first speculation is either false or is never proven to be true. I hope this not only for the sake of Gary Condit’s soul, but for the soul of the American people. Need I remind you that the last witch hunt we had sent a man to his execution on closed circuit television? Well in case I do, I’m talking about the Timothy McVeigh execution and I can feel the fear rise up in me that the rest of American wants that closed circuit to be officially opened. Of course this is all just speculation…and a bottle of Wild Turkey.
Speculation? Shit, more like masturbation...