Posted on 03/09/2010 4:08:44 PM PST by OK Right
It sounded like the stuff of a seedy potboiler. The American president’s chief of staff approached a congressman in the House gym shower. There, both dripping wet and naked, the chief of staff bullied the congressman for not voting the president’s way on a major issue. Each recrimination was emphasized by a poke of the finger into the nude congressman’s chest.
That’s pretty the tale former Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) has peddled for a couple of days. Massa railed against White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Obama and the rest of the DC swamp House Queen Nancy Pelosi promised to drain. According to Massa, his forthcoming nay vote on ObamaCare was the last straw. The White House decided he had to go. He did them a favor by stepping away from public office.
The chronicle was scandalous and potentially damning to the current administration, particularly if there was more to it. It got Massa on live television on one of the most watched TV shows in the land. Glenn Beck devoted his entire FOX News hour to the Massa affair.
Unfortunately, after those long 60 minutes, Massa didn’t offer anything we hadn’t heard before Beck interviewed him. The congressman’s parting shots as he leaves public life? Get Washington to fix Congressional fiscal acquisitions. Get involved. Vote.
Great. Instead of an explosive tell-all, Glenn Beck helped orchestrate a yawner. This was Rob Blaglojevich all over again, hoodwinking everyone on show after show.
But worse, Glenn Beck is at fault too. Sure, it’s tempting to blame Massa for the vacuous rhetoric that filled the hour, but Beck could have dug much deeper.
And it wasn’t as if the White House didn’t try to bury Massa deeper – and in the process, help Beck! 90 minutes before airtime, the proverbial “explosive new allegations” against Massa surfaced. It wasn’t just his behavior at the party that damned him. It wasn’t just tousling another guy’s hair and saying he should take him upstairs and BLEEP him – actions that Massa decided to sum up as “salty language.” According to the new charges, Massa groped an intern at a Washington apartment house. Incredibly, Massa confirmed the charges on Beck’s show. He also said he tickled the intern “until he couldn’t breathe;” that the incident was no more than horseplay. And then he revealed that for a time, he lived together with several men in the apartment. (No, Barney Frank’s name didn’t come up.)
This is not what we had in mind when we tuned into Glenn Beck’s show today. We wanted to hear more about Rahm Emanuel’s behavior; about whether Obama had conversed with Massa about the charges leveled at him; about whether Nancy Pelosi muscled Massa into resigning.
We wanted answers to the questions Glenn Beck didn’t ask. Questions like:
Senator Massa, has Rahm Emanuel threatened you more overtly since the shower incident?
Did anyone in the White House contact you and try to convince you to resign your Congressional seat?
Is the new “groping” bombshell the last skeleton the White House or anyone in Congress can pull out of your closet?
How well do you know the person you admit you groped? Would you have described it as “groping” before these allegations surfaced? Do you think the groped one was bought off? If so, by whom?
Since you claim that you’re leaving the public eye, how about some strong parting punches? Who among your colleagues of either party is the most corrupt politico and why? I know I asked you to “name names.” I do so again. Be specific.
Beck asked two pointed questions. In essence: why run if you want to change the system? And why run if you’re innocent? Otherwise, this would-be explosive hour was a whole lot of fizzle.
As his show was wrapping, Beck made the following admission: “America, I’m gonna shoot straight with you, I think I’ve wasted your time.” We respect him for that. After all, most networks use major hyperbole to sell shows, but we expect FOX News to deliver the goods. Beck knows you can cry wolf once or twice. After that, your credibility is shot.
Beck thought he had a cooperative witness. He did not. He had a hostile witness. Beck was unable to adapt to Massa once he proved to be a hostile witness with his own agenda of CYA, rather than being the noble whistle blower Beck was lead to believe Massa would be.
Live and learn. I’ll bet Beck just became a little more cynical, in a healthy way. In hindsight, he should have treated Massa as a hostile witness from the start.
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