Massa Ruins Glenn Beck's Day; Admits to Groping "Tickle Fight" with Staffer

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Backtracking on accusations he made last weekend, former Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., told Fox News host Glenn Beck that he resigned his office because he failed to live up to his own code of conduct -- not because he was forced out by the White House for failing to back the president's health-care plan, as he suggested just days ago. Beck, clearly disappointed, told viewers at the end of the hour-long interview, "America...I think I have wasted your time."

For one brief moment, Massa was a hero to right-wingers for his allegations that the bad behavior ascribed to him were just rumors advanced by Democratic leaders to push him out of the Congress. Rush Limbaugh sang his praises, and Glenn Beck gave the entire hour of Tuesday's "Glenn Beck Show" to the freshly former congressman. When allegations of sexual misconduct against Massa gained credibility on Tuesday, Limbaugh dialed back his appreciation of Massa.

Hours later, Massa ruined Glenn Beck's day when his hour of fame before the Fox News audience amounted to no credible evidence against the White House and a heavy dose of crazy from Massa, who compared his physical hijinks with staffers to a "crossing the line" Navy ceremony he had taken part in while in the service, which he described as looking like "an orgy" during the time of "Emperor Caligula." (He showed Beck a book of photographs as he described the ceremony.) The not-quite-one-termer attributed his admitted to bad behavior to his inability to adapt to civilian norms after he left the Navy.

Until his resignation on Monday, Massa was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for the sexual harassment and groping of male staffers, allegations he denied to Beck -- although he did admit to subjecting a staffer to a "tickle fight" at his 50th birthday party, and to behaving badly while living in a townhouse with "bachelors" on Capitol Hill.

"I was set up for this from the very, very beginning," Massa told listeners of his Sunday radio show on WKPQ 105.3 FM in Hornell, N.Y., according to the Manhattan Web site, City Hall. "You think that somehow they didn’t come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill? Then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what's going on in Washington, D.C."

Today, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the House Whip, debunked Massa's claim, saying that Massa's vote had never been counted as a "yes" by the Democratic leadership.

The Massa drama began last week when the first-term congressman said he would not stand for re-election because of his battle with cancer. But already rumors were circulating of sexual misconduct with staffers, and by Monday, when news of a House ethics investigation of him came to light, Massa quit Congress altogether.

He suggested that the accusations against him were trumped up, and while he backtracked on his reasons for resigning, he still intimated that the charges of sexual misconduct lodged against him had nefarious roots. "I mean, think about this," he said to Beck, "within fifteen minutes of me deciding to leave, Politico published a full story on this, complete with anonymous sources and timelines that, obviously, had been in development for who knows how long. Don't you find that odd?"

Actually, Beck said, he didn't, seeing as there were two unauthorized biographies in the works about the Fox News host. So who's the bigger martyr, Massa?

During his Sunday radio show, Massa said that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had harassed him on the health-care vote, even confronting Massa while the two stood naked in a shower at the House gymnasium, charges he stood by during his appearance on Beck's show.