Condit and Chung--Lights! Camera! Sound! Meaninglessness!

With “Prime Time Thursday” behind him, Rep. Gary Condit can now look constituents in the eye and declare without fear of contradiction: I did not have interview relations with that woman, Miss Chung.

None worth noting, anyway.

Although Connie Chung’s questions were crisp and to the point, her half-hour with Condit on ABC yielded no worthy news except his refusal to either confirm or deny having a sexual relationship with Chandra Levy.

She pressed him perhaps a dozen times on whether they were having an affair, trying to sneak in the front door, back door, side door and pet door. When he evaded again and again, Chung should have cozied up to him and said softly: “Why don’t you just whisper it to me, just between you and me?”

That worked for Chung on Newt Gingrich’s mother in a televised interview a few years ago when the elderly woman balked initially at answering Chung’s question about her son’s opinions of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Chung fed her the “whisper” line, and she caved.

For all one knows, Condit told Chung fibs as fat as the tomatoes they grow in Modesto. The interview format he demanded--a videotaped half-hour that would air unedited--favored him. Yet this is a medium that assures the public it can explain complex issues in 90 seconds, and Chung can’t get anything done in 30 minutes?

Of course, what was there to get done? Did anyone really anticipate Condit breaking down like a “Perry Mason” witness and saying he caused Levy’s disappearance? Was he supposed to pull a Wilt Chamberlain and boast publicly about his sexual conquests? Chung tried heading there a couple of times, but no dice.

No dice to it all, in fact.

Flipping back through the nation’s scrapbook of whipped-up media frenzies--starring O.J. Simpson, Richard Jewell, Princess Diana, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Elian Gonzalez--one is hard put to find one more absurd or depressing than the present fixation on Condit. It leaves TV news, especially, less time, energy and resources to cover issues that have long-term significance. While the 24-hour news networks fiddle, Rome burns.

Led by TV, this media hyperventilation--including Chung’s interview--has everything to do with sex and titillation at this stage, nothing with relevance.

This is another case of the public being urged what to think about by media from which it takes many of its cues. It’s an old story, media inflating a story with their own gaseous helium and then using the monstrously oversized blimp they create as justification for their relentless coverage. It recalls the old joke about a kid murdering his parents, then asking the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.

One heard the Condit drumroll crescendoing Thursday as his televised chat with Chung approached, and as always in such cases it was massaged by media foreplay.

It’s a skewed universe where many media members see their role as advisor and image counselor to embattled politicians. Yet such is the case, these duh dialogues surfacing in national newscasts everywhere this week after Condit said he would grant his first TV interview to Chung.

“We’ll see tonight whether Condit sounds like a changed man,” said CNN’s ace chin stroker, Bill Schneider, Thursday.

“What he has to keep in mind. . . . “ David Gergen began on NBC’s “Today.”

He absolutely must persuade Levy’s parents “he’s done enough,” George Stephanopoulos said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“He has to demonstrate to people’s he’s not a murderer . . . and a sleazebag,” Robert Lichter said on the Fox News Channel. Condit must “present an image of himself,” he added.

Image, not truth or reality, was the Holy Grail here. In fact, Condit looked as cold and pasty as an apparition opposite the animated Chung, as if visceral impressions of him necessarily prove anything. Wiped from the memories of TV’s amnesiac pundits is that, contrary to an old saw, the camera does lie if the subject in front of it has the skill and polish to manipulate it. Already forgotten is how earnest Clinton appeared when assuring the nation that he had not been involved sexually with Monica Lewinsky.

In any case, Americans and their media should take a cold shower and reexamine this objectively. If Condit looks good or bad or appears sincere or insincere on TV or in print interviews, what’s the point as long as Washington, D.C., cops say he is not a suspect in Levy vanishing?

There will always be jerks and juicy sex, and perhaps Condit is a crossroads for both. Yet why should anyone outside his district care about the political future of a congressman who was not on their radar pre-Chandra Levy?

There was advice this week, too, for Chung, one of Larry King’s regular Condit panelists on CNN insisting, for example, that she ask what kind of “protection” he used when having reported sexual relations with Levy.

Everyone wondered if Chung would be on her game. As lofty as she was with Gingrich’s mom? As top-notch as when rushing to Tanya Harding rinkside in 1994 and icing her for CBS?

Next to Chung, it was King who scored the biggest coup Thursday night by landing for his panel of Condit moral watchdogs not Dolly Parton, not Little Richard, not Senor Wences and his lipsticked hand, but Harding herself, flashing back to her own televised chat with Chung. “Was she fair to you?” Larry wanted to know.

When covering Gary Condit, you go in-depth.