Yesterday when I watched Glenn Beck interviewing Eric Massa, I found that I had made up my mind about Massa in less than 15 minutes. He is a liar. One of the things that became immediately clear to me in those 15 minutes was that Massa is a closeted homosexual. Furthermore, he isn’t very good at hiding in the closet either. All his talk about tickle fights, tussling a guy's hair, naked shouting matches in the showers and so on all came off like poor attempts to make closeted gay behavior sound innocent.
So it comes as no surprise to me that we learn today that Massa was groping and something called “snorkeling” back in his navy days.
From The Atlantic: [I]n conversations yesterday and today with some of Massa’s Navy shipmates, it became clear that the behavior toward his subordinates that got Massa into trouble in Congress is part of pattern that dates to his time in the Navy.
According to Peter Clarke, a Navy shipmate, Massa was notorious for making unwanted advances toward subordinates. He tells the story of his friend Stuart Borsch, with whom Massa shared a hotel room while on leave during the first Gulf War. “Stuart’s at the edge of the bed,” Clarke says Borsch told him at the time, “and [Massa] starts massaging him. Massa said, ‘You’ll have to get one of my special massages.’ He called them ‘Massa Massages.’” Ron Moss, a Navy shipmate and Borsch’s roommate, confirmed that Borsch told him this story at the time.
Borsch, now a history professor at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, didn’t addresss that specific incident, but did confirm to me in an email that he was groped by Massa: “In 1990, aboard the U.S.S. Jouett, I was awakened when a senior officer, Lt. Commander Massa, seemed to be groping me. (I was a lieutenant at the time.) I believe he may have been drinking. I shouted at him and he left. I mentioned the incident to several other officers. I did not officially report it.”
Clarke says that Massa’s roommate, Tom Maxfield, was also assaulted. “Tom lived on upper bunk,” Clarke say. “When you’re on ship, you’re almost exhausted 24-7. So a lot of times you sleep with your uniform on. Tom and Massa shared a stateroom together. Massa climbed up on the top of his bunk, which is hard to do–you never crawl up on somebody else’s bunk. He wakes up to Massa undoing his pants trying to snorkel him.”
The funny thing about all of this, is that if Massa simply kept his mouth shut and resigned with his cancer excuse, his story would have probably died by Friday. Now that he is out of Congress the ethics probe is over. So what is the benefit to stirring up the media hornet nest by calling out Rahm Emanuel (I don’t even believe that happened now) on the radio and appearing on Glenn Beck and Larry King? The only reason I can think of is that Massa is looking to out himself once and for all. Hopefully it will happen soon so we can all be spared these stories about tickle fights and snorkeling!
Via: Memeorandum
Via: The Atlantic
Via: The Hill
Via: The Right Scoop