Double agents and double crossings

It was something in the air. The putrid smell of justice and retribution could be scented among the foliage of spring and the proliferation of pigeon shit.

The man was on to them.

The Double Agent backed up the files with a snap of her wrist and unconscious toss of her silky blond locks. Anyone of her equally privileged and overworked coworkers would assume she was doing what she always does – handling business.

They would be right. It is the nature of that business, its very insidiousness, that would surprise them. The Double Agent had become an Insider’s Insider, in no small part because she knew how to properly handle, and dispose of, business.

Not to mention she knows the smell of retribution when she inhales it.

In days she would have a high-powered attorney, a justice committee head calling for blood and F-I-F tattooed on the small of her back.

The Double Agent hated the smell of justice almost as much as she hated being on the receiving end of it.

/Scene

That is how I imagine Monica Goodling's final days before she made good on the promise held in the phrase “going underground.”

Fine, I may have taken a few creative liberties, but you have to admit it beats CNN’s “legitimate” reporting (read: snooze fest) wherein all they could dig up was a resume, some law school reunion pics and neighbors who claim they don’t know her.

I do not know what it is Ms. Goodling knows or when she knew it…or when she told it, but I do know that if Ms. Lewinsky had been half as smart as this chick she might be employable and we might have enjoyed the final days of the go-go 90s in peace.

Whatever happens here I find this chick intriguing. In the day and age of reality TV, Internet infamy and Paris Hilton, I am amazed that someone can resist the call of the cameras. This woman must have something to live for.

Or, she’s seen what they do to pretty girls in sing-sing. Either way, I’m just saying, it has the potential to be good news TV.

Something that some folks are saying wasn’t good news TV was Katie Couric’s interview of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth who recently disclosed – in a very discreet and private manner in front of two hundred cameras – that her cancer battle has resumed.

Look, I’m no Couric fan. Neither am I a John Edwards fan – pretty boys make me nervous. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be titillated or intimidated. However, I have always liked Elizabeth.

As is often the case with political wives, people tend to forget that she’s a lawyer with a damn impressive resume herself. In interviews she has always struck me to be the heft behind the Barbie, or the Ken, as it were.

She comes across as human, engaged, self-depreciating and smart.

Her husband often comes across as a Breck girl.

Yet, I do not think Couric’s interview crossed the line. It certainly crossed it no more times than does the media’s relentless pursuit of mistresses, errant lines in a ten-year-old memoir or a candidate’s wife penchant for writing romance novels.

Some people DO wonder if the announcement was properly positioned to maximize its time on the front page. Some people DO wonder if having an ailing wife hurts or helps Edwards’ campaign. And after so many years of being pandered to and simultaneously raped by our elected officials, many of us *gasp* question the motives of anyone who would want to join their ranks.

It is not the questions that crossed the line, but our need to ask the questions that has pushed us all over the line. And no one is more to blame for that than politicians who kiss cute babies, visit black churches on kente cloth day and screen attendees at “town hall” meetings.

So leave Couric alone. The Hill, the House and the Press created this mess.
Most of us would have been satisfied with an address to send good well cards