By Richard Stoney, Orleans, CA.

After authorities began investigating the disappearance of Chandra Levy, the political aide of Representative Gary Condit, they soon discovered that the two were having a secret love affair. Condit immediately denied it as being totally untrue ("conned it"?). But after further investigative pressure, Condit finally admitted to the affair but denied being involved in her disappearance. Her body was eventually found buried.

Now we come to the Latin word, condit, which means "[he/she] disappears, causes to disappear; keeps secret, hides a fact; composes (a story or piece of literature); causes the death of someone, brings to the grave; buries traces of; puts someone in prison."

No one has been charged with her death, but a dark cloud of suspicion has remained over him, causing some people to suggest that, in fact still, Gary condidit (past tense of condit).

In no way does this essay suggest that Gary Condit was actually involved in her death or any illegalities. It is just the work of a wordplayer/punster demonstrating the linguistical similarities.

Around the time that there was a lot of news about Condit, I got sick of it and decided I would like to lampoon the subject. Thinking that his name was French, I looked in a French dictionary. All I could find was the word conduit, which did me no good, so I looked into a Latin dictionary. And there it was, condo/condere! I had never heard of the word, ever. I then spent a few hours remembering my high-school Latin to make sure I wasn't making any grammatical errors.

Beggar's Opera and its Sanskrit Wordplay

Sources:
Oxford Latin Dictionary, under condo/condere
4 years Latin
Connie chung, Baskin Robbins, marriage, divorce