“No Man’s life liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session”.

- attributed to NY State Judge Gideon Tucker



Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Glenn Beck Interviews Eric Massa

Glenn Beck interviewed recently-resigned Representative Eric Massa (D-NY) last night. Here's the lead-in by Beck prior to his nearly hour-long one-on-one with Massa.




During the bulk of Beck's program, he tried to get Massa to deliver on his hints of evil deeds and illegal behaviors by administration aides and House leaders like Hoyer and/or Frisco Nan.

Nothing doing.

Finally, after about 40 minutes of listening to Massa talk about himself, rehash old news, and make vague allegations about shadowy figures, Beck asked him to tell viewers something important, revealing and new.

Massa couldn't deliver on that simple offer. He sputtered about backing your Congressman and demanding an end to Congressional name-calling at voters. Truly laughable stuff.

But nothing really specific about the alleged shower scene with Rahm Emanuel. Or anything really dirty about bribes while in office. Sure, he mentioned the risk of offending campaign donors. What's new about that?

What I believe Beck expected in the interview, something really outrageous involving either administration aides or House leaders, never materialized. About all Massa really did was reveal his cancer recurrence, that he was too tired to go on, had let everyone down by failing to adhere to his own high behavioral standards, then call for God and motherhood sorts of behavior from voters.

Oh, yes. Massa dangled questions about how quickly the apparently pre-packaged smear pieces on him appeared from Politico and Robert Gibbs. But he never made direct, detailed accusations.

Live interviews of public scandal figures is always risky. Beck began by warning that the interview might not happen, might end early, or might be useless.

At the end of the program, Beck apologized to viewers and declared Massa's interview to be the last.

Useless and oversold by the former Congressman.

At least Beck was honest in admitting it had been a wasted hour. But it was still interesting television.

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