ABCNEWS has a page where you can submit questions to Condit. What are the chances of them picking any readers submissions?

If you have a question, go here.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001

Answers

Oh neat idea. But I wonder if Chung will use any of them? Did you notice Condit specified a female interviewer?

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001

I think it'll be a puff-ball piece. I doubt that they'll ask him the hard questions, but then again what do I know.

Might just have to try to get the TV hooked up by then. LOL! God I love living out in the boonies! I haven't missed the TV at all.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001

[OG, admiringly: "junk-food journalism." I like that.]

Chicago Sun-Times

Condit, Chung and the restless

August 22, 2001

And what do we expect Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.) to tell Connie Chung on Thursday's "Primetime Live," anyway?

It's not as though he's going to cop to having had lover Chandra Levy, the 24-year-old former intern last seen April 30, disposed of the way the most creative of the conspiracy nuts like to imagine.

First off, bad haircut and beady eyes notwithstanding, he's not one of those supervillains on the old "Batman" series with an army of henchmen to do his evil bidding. Secondly, although Chung and ABC have been designated Condit's conduit, by his picking the format, forum and interrogator, this is his show, not theirs.

Newsworthy though this interview will be, actual information may be tough to come by.

ABC News and Team Condit have agreed that the 30-minute interview (his first, electronic or print, since Levy's disappearance) will be taped earlier in the day and aired without any editing. That means if Condit filibusters or stonewalls, Chung will have little recourse, all but ensuring this exercise will be all about image and very little about substance.

Condit will use all the charisma at his disposal to try to come off as more human than the evasive pol we've seen, the cad with nothing to say since stories about Levy began to ooze into the 24-hour cable news cycles shortly after she vanished, fueling wild speculation about his culpability.

More than anything he actually says, the big news Thursday is likely to be that Condit broke his self-imposed silence. He will recite precisely what his spin doctors have advised, probably borrowing from Bill Clinton's playbook and apologizing to his family and Levy's for his indiscretions.

If he's guilty of something more serious--and it's worth remembering that, despite what it sometimes sounds like on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel, police maintain the 53-year-old married politician is not a suspect in Levy's disappearance and that there's no proof that a crime was even committed--he'll squirm no more than if he's innocent.

After all, what does an innocent man look like when, with the stakes so high, he's getting grilled on TV--or at least warmed over, as is more likely with Chung?

On her best day, Chung ranks as maybe--maybe--the 10th toughest interviewer in the ABC News stable. If you desperately needed information, wouldn't you send Ted Koppel, Barbara Walters, Chris Bury, Diane Sawyer, Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, Charles Gibson, Peter Jennings or Chris Wallace ahead of her?

But Chung (still marked by her 1995 "just between you and me" interview with Newt Gingrich's mom) is on a roll. She was the confessor of choice last week for Karin Stanford to rat out her former lover, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Now there's this, the biggest "get" since Walters got Monica Lewinsky to open her mouth in 1999.

Apparently, Chung is friends with Marina Ein, the Washington publicist Condit has hired to save his career, and last week convinced Condit's attorney, Abbe Lowell, she was the best choice.

So it will be Chung with Condit on Thursday, and for days after that the congressman's carefully crafted comments will be parsed by the cable news commentators.

They'll claim it's fresh meat for their feeding frenzy, but we know better: Whatever sound bites Chung gets out of Condit will have been so pre-processed by his advisers that they give the illusion of offering something substantial on which to chew instead of being the temporarily satisfying empty calories that they are.

This is junk-food journalism.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001

Plus it's past my bedtime.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001

FOX is reporting that Condit's letter to his constituents does not apologize for his affair with Chandra--in fact, doesn't mention it. Guess that tells you what the Chung interview will be like.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001