Here’s a story I haven’t told because I didn’t think it was something that would be helpful. When I was in Pittsburgh for the Netroots Nation conference, I shared an elevator with Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), who is now resigning in a very colorful way (or, maybe not) after having caused a bit of a scene at a wedding on New Year’s Eve. According to his telling, he and his staff were fairly drunk near the end of the night and one of his staffers suggested to him that he might hook up with one of the bridesmaids. He responded by grabbing one of his male staffers and saying that what he really ought to be doing is [having sex with] him. Then he tussled his hair and retired for the evening. Seems bawdy, but fairly innocent, and frankly I don’t care.
In any case, I first became concerned about Rep. Eric Massa’s political savvy on that elevator in Pittsburgh. It was during the August recess, and Massa has just endured some pretty raucous tea partying at his town hall meetings. Even though I clearly had a press pass hanging around my neck, he decided to go off on his own district, telling me that it was “the most right-wing fucking district in the entire country.” I knew I had a news story, because it’s never a good idea to bad mouth the people you represent, especially while using profanity. But I didn’t want to hurt Massa so I didn’t write anything about it.
Instead, I just made a mental note that he was not a very smart politician and figured it was unlikely that he would be reelected. Now, today, he is espousing a conspiracy theory that Rahm Emanual and the House Democratic leadership are forcing him to resign so that the threshold for passing health care reform will drop from 217 to 216. He has some especially choice words for Emanuel.
“When I voted against the cap and trade bill, the phone rang and it was the chief of staff to the president of the United States of America, Rahm Emanuel, and he started swearing at me in terms and words that I hadn’t heard since that crossing the line ceremony on the USS New Jersey in 1983,” Massa said. “And I gave it right back to him, in terms and words that I know are physically impossible.”
“If Rahm Emanuel wants to come after me, maybe he ought to hold himself to the same standards I’m holding myself to and he should resign,” Massa said.
And he’s threatening not to resign just so he can kill the effort to pass health care reform.
[Massa] suggested on a New York radio station Sunday that he could rescind his resignation — scheduled to take effect at 5 p.m. Monday — after asserting that an ethics investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed one of his aides may have been orchestrated by Democratic leaders to get him out of office before the health care vote.
Responding to a caller to his weekly radio show on WKPQ Power 105 FM, a recording of which was made available via the Web site of local station 13 WHAM-TV, Massa said: “I’m not going to be a Congressman as of 5 o’clock [Monday] afternoon. The only way to stop that is for me to rescind my resignation. That’s the only way to stop it. And the only way that’s going to happen is if this becomes a national story.”
If I am not mistaken, Massa has been opposing the health care reforms because he favors a single-payer system. I don’t know how sincere he is in that because he does represent the most conservative district in New York State, and his ‘no’ vote might just be a way of giving himself some cover. I had hoped, when I first heard that he might resign, that we would feel free to vote for the reforms now that he wasn’t seeking reelection. But, apparently, he now wants to stick around to kill reform provided that everyone will pay attention to him for a couple of days.
I understand that Rep. Massa has some health problems, and he initially explained his decision to resign as a result of discovering that his cancer is no longer in remission. I do not know if that is true, but I wish him good health. As to his character? I’m not impressed.
This is a shocker to you? Given the conduct of those in both the House and Senate, it seems as though Massa isn’t alone in his contempt for his constituents. He just made the mistake of showing it in public(or at least public space).
So often true, although it is always a surprise to hear about it in such unvarnished language. I never followed Massa but I was under the impression that he had a lot of Netroots support. This is one dog that just didn’t hunt, as Bill Clinton would say.
Speaking of nominally progressive Dems voting against health reform, where have the pro-Kucinich brigades been lately? Reform is now at risk of becoming MORE conservative, Stupak-style, because Kucinich refuses to vote for it.
I don’t know where they are .. though I hope if it is actually one vote short .. that Dennis would vote for it
Somebody is seriously ratcheting up the blackmail on the Hill. It’s kinda obvious IMO.
And dkos questions his mental health, assuming that wasn’t snark.
this seems to be turning into a first class public meltdown. He’s stopped making any sense at all.
i can’t help but wish that people in this country would see through the “conspiracy theory” label and stop feeding into its use as a delegitimizing wrecking ball for dismissing ideas.
i share your appraisal that this controversy seems, at this point with the current available info, like its been blown out of proportion. unless he grabbed this male staffer by the balls or tweaked his nipple or something, i don’t really see this as particularly inappropriate.
if massa is making some kind of effort to torpedo health legislation, and if that is the root of his accusations against the Leadership, then i am disgusted and i hope he resigns.
but is it true that there are political machinations behind the calls to resign? i think the honest answer, in light of available information, is “i don’t know.” to dismiss massa’s claims as “conspiracy theory” is getting ahead of the facts; the truth is that we don’t know with any certainty that there WASN’T a higher level effort.
and hell, if he really is trying to torpedo HCR, i hope there IS and WAS a concerted effort on the part of the Leadership to sink him now.
but calling it a “conspiracy theory” is a way of lumping massa’s claims along with all the other ideas in this country that Serious People are supposed to dismiss, despite having no honest certainty that those ideas are false. the use of those two words is accurate from a literal standpoint, but i object more and more to the destructive use of the term. “conspiracy theory” has become, as you are well aware, a catch all for the supposed lunacy of suggesting that there may have been a concerted effort behind something we are all expected, for whatever reason, to believe is a random or unplanned occurrence.
are there loony conspiracy theories? you bet. oodles of them. but there are plenty of them that people dismiss very irresponsibly. and it can sometimes be very hard to tell the loony ones from the ones that hold important truths, because most of these things are never seriously (read “Independently”) investigated.
from my perspective, this happens most often when Serious People are nearly forced by events beyond their control to admit that there is coordinated Interference by interested parties in a wide array of events for which the Official Stance is that there was No Interference.
i’m not laying that all on BooMan in this instance, but i’ve come to bristle at the use of the term “conspiracy theory” as a dismissing tool. anyone else? bueller?
well, I don’t think Eric Massa has done a whip-count, and he would have to do that to determine that he is the deciding vote.
The use of the phrase “Conspiracy Theory” as a dispositive is way out of line. Collective planning with illegal intent happens many times every day. Very few end up in front of judges or juries who can rule as to illegal intent. The fact that a line of argument can be dismissed because someone calls it a “conspiracy theory” is stupid and lazy. Both conspiracies and paranoia are real.
But the allegations we’re talking about in the case of Massa wouldn’t even rise to that level. ‘Concerted action’ by Democratic leadership might be more like it, and so what? I think everyone, including Congressman Massa, will be happier when he leaves.
I think it is a conspiracy theory in the classic sense. Just because you have an ethics complaint against you is no reason to resign. Charlie Rangel has about five of them and he didn’t quit Congress.
It’s Massa’s decision to quit, and that’s not something the leadership would have anticipated based on the facts Massa lays out.
Plus, who said he is the deciding vote? And why is he so hell-bent on voting against health care reforms?
Perhaps for the same reason he was so hell-bent on voting against cap and trade. The man consistently talks out of both sides of his neck. He provides his conservative constituents the ‘no’ votes they want on significant Democratic legislation while hiding behind “progressive” principles.
What shocks me, although it shouldn’t, is the reaction from the left ranging from giving him the benefit of the doubt to defending him.
There are those who say the President is weak and others who say he just hasn’t yet figured out how to wield power. I forcefully reject the former and fully concur with the latter. If the White House is strong arming this jerk, I’m heartened that this President is finally figuring out how to wield power.
“If the White House is strong arming this jerk, I’m heartened that this President is finally figuring out how to wield power.”
agreed
If the White House meant to bully Massa into line on ACES, it backfired, because Massa’s, shall we say, ‘independence’ began increasing visibly immediately after the alleged incident. Someone did not do their staff homework. They picked Rahm to go after the only person in Washington who is more crazy belligerent than he is. Since then, Massa has changed from independent to oppositional. The value of “strong-arming” is as strong-arming does. If this alleged incident is typical of White House strong-arming, no wonder they can’t get anything done and no one is paying attention to Rahm. Massa needed the stroke, not the strong-arm. Strong arm Harry Reid. Strong arm fucking Mitch McConnell. For that matter, try strong-arming Tim Geithner.
“It’s Massa’s decision to quit”
indeed it is, and for me that begs the question: is there another reason he’s resigning? maybe someone has something icky on him?
He’ll be on Beck’s show, Yes, Glenn Bleck, tomorrow to explain it all. Someone remind me again of his progressive principles.
Going on Beck’s show in and of itself isn’t a sign of being a traitor … after all .. hasn’t Obama gone on BillO’s show?
there’s a difference, imo. o’liely may be an asshole, but beck’s batshit crazy.
either way, it’s certainly not an endorsement of massa’s ‘progressive credentials’, let alone his mental stability.
the guy’s a loose cannon.
I have no idea what’s going on with Eric Massa, but the larger point you are making is extremely important and very little heeded as yet.
Yeah, if you were referring to my original comment as I think you were, it’s a little bit of a bummer. Apparently neither BooMan nor anyone else felt it was worthy of much discussion. But I, for one, am sick of the way that term is used and I’m speaking up about it.
The original comment wasn’t intended as a rail against BooMan, and I hope he digs that. It’s just that, at some point, more Americans need to start thinking on a higher level about how language is used to cordon off certain ideas from the public debate.
To paraphrase, someone once said that whoever controls our definitions defines our reality. That’s precisely what has been happening for thousands of years, and it’s time to recognize this and have the guts to address it. Otherwise, this whole sad show that so many on this blog lament and express frustration with will just roll on, steamrolling anyone in its way.
I thought we didn’t want that. I thought we wanted to change it. I thought we agree that so much of this suffering in the country/world is needless and can be ended. Addressing the use of the term “conspiracy theory” to paint someone and/or their ideas as nutty and unworthy of consideration is important. And I don’t want to hear anything about how I’m defending Massa; I’m not, and I made that clear in the original post.
I don’t even care about Massa. What you’re saying is very important and I totally agree. It’s just as bad on the Left as on the Right, just different “shibboleths.” There have always been conspiracies, there sure as hell are conspiracies now. Since conspiracies don’t have a tendency to come right out and explain themselves, it stands to reason that intelligent people would want to theorize about them and figure out where they come from and why. But for some reason, we’re not supposed to connect dots, we’re supposed to think we live in a world where the really important things are random happenings caused by lone nuts.
Not only that, a lot of things dismissed as “conspiracies” are technically not, but have a similar nature, such as long-term institutional culture and class attitudes. Yet we’re not supposed to talk about any of this. And all it takes is a few suggestible nuts and a few professional disinformationists, and voila, you have 50 conspiracy theories that are patently stupid, or designed to “poison the well” by mixing the false with the true or the discredited with the credited. These get forefronted in the media. Then all “rational” people head for the exits and the whole subject is off limits.
I think Toqueville noticed this long ago: Because we are a “free” society, we have a new form of social control — it is accomplished not so much by force as by voluntary self-censorship. So Americans tend to have a very close boundaries as to what is “acceptable” to talk about or even think about.
Massa ran as not being a typical politician. I guess he’s proved that to be true.
Not only is Messa sounding like he’s a married man who hasn’t come to terms with his true sexuality, but he’s describing his days in the Navy like he was the naval guy from the village people. I would normally say someone needs to stop him, but please don’t. This is too entertaining.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/massa_remembers_bawdy_navy_days.php?ref=fpblg