ERIC MASSA, the Democratic representative who resigned at the beginning of the week rather than face investigation for alleged sexual harassment of male staffers, continues to embarrass his party.
Several newspapers reported yesterday that speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office was told of Mr Massa’s behaviour last October, but failed to act. Calls are growing for the House ethics committee to investigate the congressman despite his departure.
Mr Massa initially said he was leaving Congress because he faced a “third major cancer-recurrence scare”. He also said he was “set up” by Ms Pelosi and House majority leader Steny Hoyer because he intended to vote against the Senate healthcare Bill that will soon face a vote in the House – a charge Mr Hoyer called “absolutely, definitively untrue”. Mr Massa then said he was not forced out.
Ms Pelosi excused Mr Massa’s pronouncements, saying he was “a very sick person . . . diagnosed with cancer” whose judgment was “perhaps . . . impaired because of the ethical issues that have arisen”.
The Eric Massa saga has dominated US airwaves this week. First there was his story of an encounter in the shower at the Congressional gym with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel last year. Mr Massa called Mr Emanuel “the devil’s spawn” and said he “would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive” to win votes for the president’s stimulus plan.
“I am sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn’t going to vote for the president’s budget,” Mr Massa told an upstate New York radio station. “You have to know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?” The White House denied the story.
Mr Massa has given two accounts of sexual innuendos with male staffers. One incident took place at a wedding party on New Year’s eve. After off-colour remarks about bridesmaids, Mr Massa said he told a junior aide: “What I really ought to be doing is fracking you. And then [I] tousled the guy’s hair and left . . .”
Republicans embraced Mr Massa when he accused the Democrats of forcing him out over his opposition to the healthcare Bill. But the right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck’s interview with Mr Massa backfired when the congressman talked about his exploits, not Democratic foibles.
“Now they’re saying I groped a male staffer,” Mr Massa told Beck, recounting his 50th birthday party. “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.”
Mr Massa, who is married, hired young male homosexuals and paid them so poorly that they were forced to live with him in a Capitol Hill row house. The Atlantic Online substantiated its report that “Massa was notorious for making unwanted advances towards subordinates” during his 20 years as a US naval officer.