Eric Massa’s Meltdown: Admits, blames, stutters and flusters on “gay” harrasment charge
”Well, here’s that answer, I’m not going to answer that…. Why don’t you ask my wife, ask my friends, ask the 10,000 sailors I served with in the Navy…. Well, but it’s an insulting… No, no, not me. It insults every gay American, because somewhere it… It somehow classifies people”
From a Larry King Show interview with Eric Massa, the now-retired US Representative from New York. The 50-year-old Democrat has been slapped with multiple allegations of inappropriately touching his staffers — male staffers. Massa has a wife and several children. King asked Massa if he was gay, and explained that the reason he asked was because he said he had groped a male staffer. He says here that his opposition to a health care bill (that did not include a public option) led to his ouster. (Larry King)
”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.”
Recently-retired NY Democrat Eric Massa describing to WKPQ radio an incident that he thinks has led to allegations of sexual misconduct by a male member of his staff. He is saying here that an incident occurred at a New Year’s Eve wedding where many of the men had been drinking, when he groped the man in an admittedly inappropriate way. Massa says the staffer never mentioned anything to him. Massa announced his retirement last week, allegedly for health reasons related to a former bout with cancer. (News10) (Huffington Post)
”Now, they’re 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…. This was at a townhouse. We all lived together. All the bachelors and me, because nobody could afford, in Washington, DC, to pay the outrageous rents. My chief of staff had a conniption, and said, you can’t live there, it’s not Congressional….
”That’s why I resigned, I own this misbehavior…. I never translated from my days in the Navy to being a Congressman…. Let me show you something, I’m going to show you a lot more than tickle fights [opens photo book]. That’s a ‘crossing the line ceremony’ in 1983. If you were to take this out of context today… Can you imagine transporting back to this, today? It looks like an orgy in ‘Caligula’….
”No, no, no. And there’s a big difference. But when you take things out of context, in Washington, DC — this is what the whole crux of this conversation is about…. I did nothing sexual. I did things that were wrong. I should not have allowed myself to be that familiar with my staff.”
Eric Massa, of New York, doing a rather poor job of explaining the “context” of his odd behavior which has led to allegations of sexual misconduct from a male staffer. Massa resigned his position this week from the US House of Representatives. He seems to be saying here that his behavior is a carry-over from some type of playful camaraderie that Navy personnel engage in. He also makes claims here with Glenn Beck of Fox News, of “whip-cracking” politics from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. He describes a finger-poking incident from Emmanuel that happened while Massa was taking a shower. It appeared that Beck and others in the “right-wing media” were hoping that Massa would expose corruption by Barack Obama‘s White House staffers and other leaders in the Democratic party. But when Massa did not deliver, Beck told his fans that he’d wasted their time. During Eric Massa’s short time in Congress, he seemed to have agreed with the majority of the Democrats’ political platform, including support for gay equality. (Fox News)
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