Speculation: What To Make Of Eric Massa

Now, what's his excuse?

-by Noah

Like most progressives, I am disappointed about the Eric Massa situation. It’s not the first time a politician has disappointed the public and, it unfortunately, won’t be the last. Eric Massa was even one of the very few politicians who ever took the time to write me a no BS, bright, articulate note in response to something I sent him. As I write this, we don’t even know what remains to be heard about this particular example of a political career gone wrong. For instance, anyone want to bet that the catalog of text messages is coming? Yet, in my book, no matter what the media would have us believe, the Massa story certainly doesn’t top the stories of Nixon running, screaming out of his mind, down the halls of the White House or his VP, Spiro Agnew, accepting grocery bags of cash for services rendered right in his office; at least, not yet. Nor, for that matter, does it top administration officials having a financial interest in a company that rebuilds things in a country we just blew up. 

In the case of Eric Massa, I take the talk of sexual harassment very seriously and it may have gone back to his Navy days. If the reports are true, what happened aboard ship won’t be staying aboard ship. But, I find the changing stories and four different explanations for his sudden resignation more abnormal and disconcerting. It’s more than the usual Washington bad behavior and politician tap-dancing. It and the manner and tone with which it has been delivered are massively irrational and display a high level of fragmented reasoning, especially for a man who, a year and a half ago, seemed pretty bright and managed to organize and run a campaign so well that he won in a traditionally Republican district. However, behavior like he has exhibited in the last few days would have gotten him bounced from the Navy long ago, years before he rose to third in command on his ship. So, what happened? For the last few days, Eric Massa has looked, to me, like a guy having a breakdown. The intensity and the look of him bring the word ‘psychotic’ to mind. What may have been a wildcard guy just got a whole lot wilder and went over the edge.  
 
Was it all just Washington, or, is Massa going through psychosis? Clearly, this is a man with no grounding. Psychotics are often known to be very charming and often able to cloak their true state of mind for a long time. I hate to sound like a sort of amateur armchair shrink but, having worked in the music business for several decades, I’m familiar with psychosis, drug induced or not. I’m also a recent cancer patient so I have spent a lot of time googling the side effects of various medications. The stuff the docs give you for some cancers (fortunately, not mine) are much more serious than those medication ads we see on TV which seem to have 15 seconds of product name and 45 seconds of listed side effects, right down, it seems at times, to “Warning, some patients have been known to grow a second head.”

So, yesterday, knowing that Massa has had a recurrence of his cancer, the thing that he gave as his first of at least four reasons for resigning from Congress, I decided to google his cancer, Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, along with the word ‘psychosis.’ Go ahead. Do it yourself. You will see that there have been many articles written about the relationship between this particular cancer, the drugs prescribed for it, and psychotic behavior. I don’t know what drugs the man has been given, but here’s one example. I offer it not as an excuse for a man’s behavior, but, something did ring my alarm bell.

Washington has always been full of people who seem to be walking a tightrope over the mental abyss. I’ve always likened Congress to a building full of overgrown, immature paddle-fetish frat boys and sorority girls. The C Street Family Brothel/Fundamentalist Cell is just one example. There’s also Michelle Bachman, David “Diapers” Vitter, John Ensign, and even Bill Clinton and his fabulous cigar box, although he at least had some substance to go with his problem. None of those I just mentioned ever felt the need to resign. I used to live in Washington so I can say I’ve seen these types of people first hand. You can still see way too many of your Congresspeople and their aides at work in the bars around the Capitol building on any given late afternoon or evening. I suppose they would call it networking. But the case of Eric Massa is not just like Wilbur Mills being found in the Jefferson Memorial pool with a “showgirl.” Something irrational in a different way is going on and I haven’t heard any responsible voices asking what that something might be. How long has Massa been like this? It’s interesting to note that none of his staff or family has spoken up in his defense. What do his doctors think? If this were I, I would hope they’d be chasing me down with a syringe full of Thorazine. It just seems to me that this is more than just a candidate for top Washington Hall Of Fame Flameout of all time.
 
Meanwhile, the media only cares about the tabloid circus aspects of the story and they pile it on instead of seeing a man who, for whatever reason, needs help. What if he hurts himself or someone else? They’ll have putrid egg on their smug faces and they won’t even know it. The New York Daily News refers to Massa as “Creepy ex-Rep. Massa,” and even asks its readers for text messages:

Did you receive an "inappropriate" text message from ex-Rep. Massa? E-mail us privately and safely at news@nydailynews.com. Confidentiality is assured.

At best, the Daily News is being just as creepy as “Creepy ex-Rep. Massa.” What’s next? Tell on your parents day? Creepy Larry King was no different when he invited Massa on to his show and played let’s watch the freak show. And then there’s Glenn Beck. Now, that was surreal! That was grist for Lenny Bruce. Dueling wackos. Beck had tweeted his FOX-LOON followers that “All Americans need to hear him.” Beck and his teabagger legions were all eager to hear about “the corruption” just like Arlen Spector obsessively wanted to hear about “the breasts” during the Clarence Thomas circus of years ago, or the repressed holier-than-thou inquisitors at witch trials centuries ago. “Tell us about the corruption.” Watching Beck’s face was priceless as he realized the import of the fact that Massa had nothing for him in the way of dirt and had even begun the show with an admission of guilt and owned up to some of his actions. At one point, Beck was covering his mouth in disbelief at how bad and how deep he had stepped into it; trapped in the goo like the fat little beady-eyed rodent that he is. The ultimate for me was when Beck pleaded and begged Massa for something, dirt on those dreaded evil unions, dirt on Rahm, anything, and Massa told him that the core of the problem in Washington was the need for campaign finance reform. I would have loved to have been in the FOX control room for that one but I’ll have to settle for the look on Beck’s face as he wanted to just disappear from his own pathetic show into a hole. Uttering the words “campaign finance reform” in a FOX studio is an offence on the level of the Pope calling for free, hospital supervised abortions for anyone who needs one. It isn’t done. Roger Ailes must have been reaching for his heart medicine. I know in my soul that the producer was reaching for the kill switch and the screen was about to go black, but it didn’t. Instead, we got an oh-so-fine moment of comeuppance right on the telly.