Word: conditioning
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Congressmen don't usually hang around on the House floor any longer than they have to. But for Gary Condit, it may be the only sanctuary left. On Thursday afternoon, as the campaign-reform bill was crashing to earth, so did the rest of his life. At the back of the chamber, the California Congressman leaned on the rail, chatting and joking with the men and women who still treat him as a colleague. As the others wandered away one by one, Condit lingered for a while, all alone...
...that the scandal-trained media had ignored the story before. It was July 4 week, with its congressional recess and all-around dearth of news, that marked the Condit tale's ascendancy into the tier just below Monica and O.J. and Jon-Benet. But there was still more unsaid than said, some restraint in the airwaves. Condit's leaked admission was the cutting of the leash...
...This was the week the apparent chaff - the Hell's Angels ties, the Bill Macy comparisons, the alleged attempt to hush a stewardess - finally fell away. Condit ended last week by admitting Saturday in his third interview with police that he had indeed had a romantic relationship with Chandra Levy. And with that the hounds were loosed...
...rather neat crescendo, this week's increasingly meaty tidbits took care of that. The further investigations into Condit's correspondence with Anne Marie Smith. The minister whose then-18-year-old daughter had had her own affair with Condit and feared for her own safety. And finally the on-camera appearance of the police, searching Condit's apartment before setting out among the dumpsters and abandoned buildings of Adams Morgan...
...Condit himself has dribbled out the details like he was working for the tabloids. Only a few years after Clinton proved to everyone that these sort of sexual dalliances were eminently forgivable, Condit has let pass all his opportunities to play the innocent. An early admission of the sex, a loud rejection of guilt, and an energetic and public search for the missing girl, might have diverted the media into a less-interesting missing-persons adventure. But while dature may abhor a vacuum, dark media suspicions flower in one. Condit's public pose - the politician's equivalent of pulling your...