Rep. Massa greets supporters last year
Last night, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s office confirmed that Eric Massa, the freshman Democrat who will retire from Congress after only one term, citing health reasons, faces an allegation of “misconduct” charges from a former male staffer. However, the AP would not characterize the allegation beyond that. Further, the New York Times story on the retirement would only say there was an allegation that he “harassed” a member of his staff. This is consistent with Massa’s take that he used “salty language” on occasion.
Massa’s office had a bit of turnover, but nobody that I have discussed this with has found it as much more than a former Navy man yelling colorfully.
The word missing from both the NYT and AP stories is “sexually,” as in “sexually harassed,” what the Politico used to describe this based on anonymous sources before Massa announced his retirement. Somewhere along the line, that got dropped, but not before Politico titillated DC and conjured up a series of comparisons to Mark Foley, basically besmirching the good name of a guy who had his third cancer recurrence scare in December.
This is a guy who was told in 1996 that he wouldn’t last six months. He survived, but now must leave Congress as a result. And Politico thinks it’s completely cool to slap him with the male predator label, when this allegation, which basically can be made by anyone, has been described in such a way by the major media today as more like someone Massa yelled at too much.
To be fair, they did win the afternoon.
Tags: Eric Massa, establishment media, NY-29, Politico
