Where Glenn Beck was wrong, was apologizing for wasting our time at the end of the interview. This interview was no waste of time because it moved the story along, in the end it destroyed the myth that Eric Massa’s claim had any viability.
It was classic train-wreck theater. You know that a train is going to end up derailed and on its side,and even feel uncomfortable waiting for it to happen, but you are powerless to stop the carnage. Through the whole experience you are just wondering if the train will wreck itself or will someone push it over.
In the case of today’s interview, it was Massa who self-derailed. It seemed as if Glenn Beck would push him at any moment, you could see the frustration in his face, his manner became more standoffish and suspicious as the hour progressed. At points you wanted Beck to stand up and scream get out of my studio and he certainly seemed as if he was ready to do that at any moment. But that wouldn’t have worked as well, letting the former Congressman hang himself was so much more effective.
The Fox News commentator destroyed him with a combination of firmness and kindness, but his biggest blow was at the very beginning, when Beck said
“So if you say that, and it comes out, you know whisper campaigns are whisper campaigns, but if it comes out…, you’re one of the most evil bastards I’ve ever met, if you can say that and look at somebody in the eye.
Massa’s bold statements of corruption on Sunday melted away today, and we learned his denials of wrongdoing were full of major holes.
Beck repeatedly pressed Massa about his reasons for resignation. If the accusations were false why he would resign. “I just can’t buy the fact that over tickle fights you would step down,” Beck said. Massa never really answered.
On Sunday Massa accused House Democratic leaders of conspiring to force him out of Congress in order to pass Obamacare. On Beck’s program today, he said no one forced him to leave. “I wasn’t forced out. I forced myself out. I failed. I didn’t live up to my own codes. I own this.”
Beck kept pushing Massa to tell the audience about the corruption in Congress, but Massa was revealing nothing, just tons of generalities that seemed to come from one of last years Glenn Beck shows, “Don’t Vote Party, or Contact Your Congressman” . No matter how hard he was pressed, Massa could not name one example of illegality that he witnessed. When he kept giving examples of simple lobbying as bribery (maybe should be illegal but isn’t) Beck didn’t let him get away with it. “No, it’s not. It’s lobbying money.”
The only time that Beck lost his cool was when Massa said there was nothing he could do to fix the problem as a member of Congress. “Bullcrap, sir!” the Host responded.
The discussion about the charges against Massa left no doubt that more was on the way. Beck mentioned the Washington Post report that the ethics comittee was investingating a charge that he groped 3 staffers and Massa said
Yeah, I did! Not only did I grope him I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday, it was kill the old guy. You can take anything out of context.”
Beck’s sarcastic retort was “was your wife at that one also?”
According to Wikopedia (not the best source I know) Massa was born on September 16, 1959 which means that birthday happened before he was elected. Yet Massa gave the indication that it happened in DC because he went on to say that his Chief of Staff got very angry at him for the incident, so he moved into his Congressional Office.
When Beck asked him if he ever touched a staffer in a sexual manner, Massa said “No. No. No. No. No, I did nothing sexual. I did things that were wrong.” He added: “My behavior was wrong. I should never have allowed myself to be as familiar with my staff as I was.”
But at the end of the show, when the Fox Host asked if there were going to be any Tiger Woods-type text messages revealed, Massa seemed to be already setting up his defense. “I’m sure there’s text messages because we bantered back and forth all the time.”
Glenn Beck’s interview was perfectly balanced, unlike the claims of the left and fears of the right, he did not embrace Massa’s story, instead he looked upon it with doubt and suspicion. The look on his face said, I don’t trust you so prove it, but Massa wasn’t even close.
We were promised that we would either learn about congressional corruption or we would learn that Massa was a fraud. We found out it was the latter, and at the same time by watching former congressman Eric Massa melting away on the Glenn Beck show, we learned what happens when you tell tall tales and are forced to back them up. It was uncomfortable to watch, but it was important to see. That in itself was reason enough to make it good television.
→You Can Find More of Jeff Dunetz’s Writing at his Personal Blog, The Lid←
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Moe Lane
Dan McLaughlin
Someone in the media probing a Democrat in a suspect situation?
6eorge Jetson (Diary) Wednesday, March 10th at 8:23AM EST (link)What a novel idea for the “journalism” trade.
that was painful to watch
bk (Diary) Wednesday, March 10th at 8:40AM EST (link)Beck set the tone at the start with his blackboard questions. He gave Massa an open mike to say anything he wanted to say about anyone, as long as it was something a) specific and b) that we hadn’t heard before.
Beck kept poking and prodding but Massa never said a single thing that hadn’t already been said. Beck’s implication that Massa chickened out by resigning also applied to him chickening out when he had a chance to lay into whoever he wanted instead of spouting a bunch of useless generalities.
ABC was not the only network with an episode of Lost yesterday
pilgrim (Diary) Wednesday, March 10th at 10:27AM EST (link)I watched the Fox News version at 4pm, the ABC version at 8, and the CNN version at 11. Tickle me Massa seemed like somebody ready to get the interviews over and done with that he had with Glenn Beck and Larry King, and then enroll his family into federal witness protection program.. I think I will learn more in the last season of Lost than I learned in Massa’s interviews. I am not yet convinced that Massa is a total fraud, but I am convinced that he fears someone or some thing.
Its a sad state of affairs
Return to Revolution (Diary) Wednesday, March 10th at 5:17PM EST (link)that voters like those in NY-29 would elect people like Massa.
Out of hand Constitutional fetishist
It's fun to make fun of Massa,
Flagstaff (Diary) Thursday, March 11th at 12:30AM EST (link)but it misses the point, which may in fact be the point.
Massa, supposedly a “no” vote, resigns in protest(?) of the administration’s unseemly pressure to have their way with him. But of course that doesn’t make sense. The right protest in that case is to stay and vote “no.” The only marginally logical excuse he gave was that he just didn’t have any fight left in him, implying it was because of his lung cancer. Lung cancer is a terrible killer, and if that is truly he cause, Massa may have few days left on Earth. But why not just say so? Or maybe it was just because of the implacable, unyielding Rahm. He’d make anybody tired.
Nobody is that tired if not terminally ill. What is the real reason? Extortion? Threats? Blackmail?
Now, this is the interesting part. Evan Bayh DID ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME THING. He didn’t resign immediately, but he did announce he wouldn’t run for re-election, without giving a coherent reason.
The press went nuts when Sarah Palin resigned as Alaska’s Governor, even though she gave at least two very credible reasons: (1) She said she didn’t want to spend all her time and money fighting nuisance lawsuits that sprang up after she ran for VP, and (2) She pointed out that it would save the state of Alaska a bunch of money too, as those same lawsuits were expensive for the state as well.
Yet, the same press gave Bayh a pass on his announcement, supposedly because he was merely not going to run again. But the reasons he gave didn’t make any sense. Again, like Massa, he blamed the poisonous atmosphere in DC, the lack of bipartisanship, the pressure to be dogmatic, thankfully, no cancer, or words to those effects. But if those are what is wrong with DC, wouldn’t the thing to do, assuming Bayh is a knight and not one of the knaves, be to stay and fight those forces of darkness? Instead of becoming part of the solution, he chose to run away from the problem. Massa = Bayh, but the treatment was entirely different because the press likes Bayh and they don’t like Massa.
Or maybe it was suggested by the White House.
“The press is so powerful in its image-making role that it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”– Malcolm X, Audubon Ballroom, December 13, 1964
House ethics committee dropped Massa ethics investigation
Scope (Diary) Thursday, March 11th at 7:42AM EST (link)That is what I heard on Fox last night. There was speculation that someone got to Massa before the Beck interview. Beck said yesterday that if everything just went away, then that would prove to be the case. When I heard they dropped the investigation, I think someone surely got to him, and, “made a deal.” That makes Massa and the House Democrats all sleaze bags. I wish Beck was able to tell all the stories that he claimed Massa told him on the phone the day before.
That was my impression
eastbaylarry (Diary) Thursday, March 11th at 10:28PM EST (link)Beck was disappointed because what he thought would be said was not said.
Several time he had to bit his lip to keep from calling him out on it.
2+2=4 dammit!
That was my impression
eastbaylarry (Diary) Thursday, March 11th at 10:28PM EST (link)Beck was disappointed because what he thought would be said was not said.
Several time he had to bit his lip to keep from calling him out on it.
2+2=4 dammit!
As I read about the strange rantings of Massa,
The_Gadfly (Diary) Thursday, March 11th at 9:50PM EST (link)I keep getting that gut wrenching feeling that attorneys general must get every time they have to depend on the testimony of one thug to put an even worse one in the clink. Yeah, Massa is an obvious liar, probably a pervert, and completely unsuited to raising himself to even the admittedly low standards of being a professional politician.
And yet, I still get the feeling that he was forced out, but there are still two questions which need to be answered: Why was he forced out? and Why was he forced out now? As I write this the news is that Speaker Pelosi’s office (which I would simply shorten to Speaker Pelosi because if her office knew but she didn’t that’s just as much of a problem) knew about the sex harassment allegations in October of 2009. Or to dig out a recent Republican scandal, Massa is to Pelosi as Foley is to Hastert. There’s a lot more rotten here than just Massa.
The Democrats would never force someone out over a sex scandal
Achance (Diary) Saturday, March 13th at 12:22PM EST (link)but they certainly would over voting wrong. She just cashed the chit she was holding on him and fired a shot across the bow of the other Democrats that might have some “liability.”
A few years ago we had a young Democrat join the Republicans to get a better position in their caucus than he would have had in his own. It was pretty well known that he liked the ladies and particularly had a taste for a particular staffer. He got himself all likkered up one night and showed up scratching on her door. Unfortunately for him she was “otherwise occupied,” some say with an Anchorage Daily News reporter. Now normally in Juneau, even if the cops get called to something like that only a few insiders ever know about it; they just take the legislator home, no report gets written, nothing, at least so long as you’re Democrat. The papers never cover this sort of stuff unless you’re a Republican. But this one was different; he’d traitored them and he woke up to find his little escapade on the front page of the Anchorage Daily News and was politically ruined by it.
In Vino Veritas
Governor Paterson picks a replacement. I think.
Cargosquid (Diary) Thursday, March 11th at 10:55PM EST (link)Ironic, no?
How about Ford?
I am not a fan
momofthecastle (Diary) Friday, March 12th at 3:06PM EST (link)of men who get too familiar with young staffers, but I am a fan of accuracy. If Mr. Massa was born in September of 1959, then his 50th birthday would be in September, 2009. Unless he was elected in a special election – and I don’t know – he would have been in office when he turned 50.
Are there more facts that I don’t know about that make your statement that his 50th birthday came before he was elected?
Beck Stepped into morew than he'd planned.
Vassar Bushmills (Diary) Saturday, March 13th at 12:10PM EST (link)http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100310/us_time/08599197098200
I think he wet down in the eyes of some of his colleagues.
Too bad.