This time, not only does it come from my home state of New York, but it involves a Democrat! Representative Eric Massa is stepping down over allegations he harassed a male staffer. To be honest, I hadn’t really been aware of this. Gothamist covered it, so it came up in my RSS feed, but I must have skipped right past it. It doesn’t help that we in the city generally ignore Albany politics; the only state politics anyone here seems interested in lately is the Paterson debacle.
Truthfully, it’s a pretty unexciting story, but worth talking about because of a few odd twists. The basics are old hat: married politician harasses and gropes male staffer, denies any wrongdoing, then realizes he’s fighting a losing battle and steps down.
It seems that from the beginning Massa knew his political career was over. He announced last week that he would not be seeking a second term, but blamed cancer (he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in the ’90s but has supposedly been “fully cured”). Of course, once the House ethics committee said it would be launching a probe, everything changed and he stepped down immediately. But there was someone else to blame this time: the Democrats! Yes, even a Democrat finds a way to deflect and blame it on the Democrats. This time it’s because Massa, who was a Republican but switched parties due to his opposition to the war in Iraq, opposes health care reform and this is a vast Democratic conspiracy to shove him out.
So that should be that, right? But the story only gets weirder. See, his behavior wasn’t like Ashburn going out to a gay club or Larry “wide stance” Craig trying to get some in an airport bathroom. These are things we expect from our closeted politicians. The Massa situation, on the other hand, lacks any confirmed sexual inappropriateness and is instead full of innuendo, locker-room gay subtext, and… tickle fights?
The first bits of this to come to light centered around his behavior and language at a New Year’s Eve wedding party. As Gothamist reports, Massa cleared the air about the incident on his weekly radio address:
I sat down at the table where my whole staff was, all of them by the way bachelors … One of them looked at me and as they would do after, I don’t know, 15 gin and tonics, and goodness only knows how many bottles of champagne, a staff member made an intonation to me that maybe I should be chasing after the bridesmaid and his points were clear and his words were far more colorful than that.
And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, “Well, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you.” And then [I] tossled the guy’s hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where it wasn’t right for me to be there. Now was that inappropriate of me? Absolutely. Am I guilty? Yes.
Battlestar Galactica references aside, it seems like an odd thing to say to your staffer while tousling his hair. Massa admits it was inappropriate, did not think the staffer found the situation uncomfortable, and asserts that it was another aide who complained. If all of that was the case, I would probably have to side with Massa. Of course it’s inappropriate, but I don’t think that comment alone should be considered enough to end someone’s career. He got a little drunk and let his homo side come out. I personally don’t think this is an earth-shattering violation of his staff. Maybe I’m wrong. But either way, it doesn’t stop there!
Now it’s being reported that Massa groped three staff members, an allegation Massa doesn’t exactly deny, but says was not sexual in nature. Because this involves a Democrat allegedly being forced out due to his opposition to health care reform, the conservative press is naturally turning him into a martyr. In turn, he’s been making the circuit on Fox News, explaining what happened to Glenn Beck:
Now they are saying I groped a male staffer. 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.
So he didn’t grope anyone, it was just some innocent, manly wrestling and tickling! See, it really just depends on how you define groping. Oh, and this party took place at the townhouse Massa shared with his staff.
Wait, what?
Yes, my friends, the self-described “salty old sailor” was sharing a townhouse with five male staffers. To avoid D.C. rent, of course! Is it just me or is this thing starting to sound like Dude Dorm: Capitol Hill? His chief of staff was understandably livid and told Massa that the living situation was “not congressional.” Massa has admitted it was a mistake, and that he’d never been able to shake his Navy mentality.
So that’s about it. Seems like this guy has some tendencies he doesn’t quite want to deal with (and that extend back to his days in the Navy), was actually smart enough not to seek a random hookup, but lacked the common sense to not live with his staff and engage in homoerotic frat play. If you ask me, there’s got to be more to this story. I find it hard to believe that this would have blown up into what it has if, as Massa claims, “nothing sexual” ever happened. Beck asked him if more damning information, such as phone calls or text messages, was likely to come out. Massa said “sure there are text messages because we bantered back and forth all the time,” but of course claims they are harmless, not sexual in nature, and just “guy stuff” (my words). Even so, I’m having a hard time reaching the same level of indignation and schadenfreude I usually find in these situations. The whole story is just so sad and weird. It’s pretty obvious to me that he’s trying to avoid the muckraking that would have not only ended his political career, but quite possibly his marriage as well. When Larry King asked him if he’s gay, Massa wouldn’t answer, saying the question “insults every gay American.” (on a side note, what is it with tri-state politicians and this “gay American” line? Are we different from other gays?)
And now even his friends on the Republican side are kicking him to the curb. Beck declared Massa had “wasted America’s time” when he wouldn’t say he was forced out of office by the dirty Democrats, but had made a mistake and was leaving of his own accord.
There’s one more tidbit here that I feel is worth mentioning, if only because it’s so ridiculous. Massa hates Rahm Emanuel. Hates him. Has called him “son of the devil’s spawn.” He related the story of a confrontation he had with Emanuel in the House gym over Massa’s refusal to support Obama’s budget proposal:
“I am sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel,” Mr. Massa said, adding that Mr. Emanuel poked “his finger in my chest, yelling at me at me because I wasn’t going to vote for the president’s budget.”
“You know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?” he continued.
hmmmm… that sounds almost exactly like the dream I had last night…
Of course, White House officials deny it ever happened and yadda yadda yadda.
The whole saga is just so bizarre. Reading through everything: the shared townhouse, the tickle fights, the fracking, the snorkeling, the excuses from cancer to health care to “salty” language, the naked chief of staff, the appearance on Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh blowing it up and promising to make it a “national story,” I honestly felt like I was reading the plot treatment for a new Christopher Buckley book.
So there you have it. The same old story with a few strange twists. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m having a hard time getting angry and self-righteous about this. The gay angle doesn’t even seem to be what everyone’s talking about. And now we’ll either have a special election or wait until November, when a Republican will probably take his place. What a strange world we all live in.
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