Busy Enough
Dog days, indeed.

August 24, 2001 9:40 a.m.

ugust is winding down now, and with any luck so will the stories about August being a slow month, especially in Washington. This subject comes up once a year, usually in August, and is flogged by D.C.-based columnists and those who propagate information and commentary in the ancient oral tradition. That is, television chatterheads and various other thumb-sucks.

While a hack should never criticize another hack for recycling material, the fact is that there is very little truth to the idea. Washington grinds on without cease: Levies are levied, bureaucrats dream up dream-crushing regulations, congressmen ravish interns, interns ravish congressmen, checks go out, checks come in, and tens out thousands of government employees glance at the calendar and calculate the days and hours until their retirement. There are few more bitter places than the inside of such a skull, at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday, with 17 years, four-and-half months to go.

As it happens, there has been a great deal of Washington news this August, as in Augusts past. The Condit saga continues, the latest chapter the much-hyped chat between Connie Chung and Rep. Gary Condit, two figures with definite Washington credentials. While only the dopiest of dolts could ever expect any sort of meaningful revelation from such a tightly controlled (on Condit's part) encounter, these events remind us that some "major" journalists don't know much about interviewing but wouldn't look bad hopping out of a cake.

Besides that, these days it would take a major revelation to raise the nation's weary eyebrows — Condit would not only have to admit that he sliced Chandra's throat, but ate her as well, probably without first saying grace. One expert has said that Condit wears the smile of a man who knows the body will never be found. Others of us suspect he may well be innocent, and that it was Ted Kennedy who gobbled her up, right down to her toenails.

Condit is hardly the only Washington news this month. George W. Bush left town but stayed on the job. In fact, for a supposedly easy-going Texan he conducts himself like a highly developed neurotic: Giving a major speech while sitting on a tack; flying to various states on missions of little or no importance; chattering with reporters — one of whom should shout out "Mr. President, why aren't you wearing pants" just to see if he'll look down (five bucks says he would). Add the latest rate cut from Alan Greenspan and the announced retirement of Sen. Jesse Helms, and that's plenty of news.

The larger point, however, is that even if the slow-month assertion were true, it would make no difference to normal Americans because we have so much other news to choose from. Washington is a boring town on the most lively of days, and it must compete with the entire world for attention. Most of the time there's no contest.

Over the past three days, for instance, a great deal of captivating news has streamed in from around the world far apart from the usual Mideast and African mayhem, tales of Russian instability, and various weather outrages. In China, inscrutable scientists have grown dog bladder tissue on the back of a mouse. As the official Xinhua news agency reports, "Though carrying a 'dog bladder' as big as half a Ping-Pong ball, the naked mouse still runs around and looks very robust." While this is one of those stories one doesn't know quite what to make of, it is hugely more interesting that yet another budget analysis from Alice Rivlin.

Closer to home, a man in Lima, Peru stood before the parliament building the other day and chopped off a testicle, which seems extreme until compared with what he did last year: sliced off his own penis. "I'm doing all this to protest my lousy situation," said Eduardo Veliz, 36, who took the dramatic action after he was refused an audience with Congress President Carlos Ferrero (due to the miracles of modern reattachment medicine, doctors promise that Eduardo can soon resume a "normal" sex life).

Americans cannot help but compare this to protests in our own capital, which are quite tame by comparison — a picketer here, a screecher there, the occasional ranting maniac. We never have a situation in which some guy screams "Send out Hastert or I'm going to cut a nut."

Even our sports stories aren't quite up to snuff. The Washington Redskins continue to imitate a community college football team, while in Britain, the legendary Sun filed this report: "CHEATING tennis ace Boris Becker has been ordered to take out a £1million insurance policy on the love child he fathered in five seconds, it was revealed yesterday." Becker will pay a total of two million pounds to a woman he lovingly encountered "in a broom cupboard at a London restaurant." Said one "legal expert": "I've never seen a bigger bill for a five-second bonk."

Many a quickie transpires in Washington, to be sure. But five seconds! Becker might be charged with concealing an automatic weapon.