A little blue-haired 83-year old lady motorist is stopped by a state trooper for speeding. The trooper asks her why she’s in such a hurry. To the bewilderment of the officer, the lady replies, “I’ve got to get there before I forget where I’m going …”
As I watched the overhyped interview of former Rep. Eric Massa of New York by conservative talk show host Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel Tuesday, Massa seemed to be playing the speeding motorist to Beck’s baffled state trooper.
The liberal Democrat, whose resignation from Congress occurred on Monday after an ethics investigation into his conduct concerning allegations of sexual harassment of staffers became known, appeared to be a man in a hurry to sell his version of the incident before he forgot his well-rehearsed lines.
Meanwhile, traffic cop Beck — looking like a man trying desperately to coax a different story out of the speeder he has just collared — finally gives it up as a hopeless job, shoves his citation book back in his pocket and walks away befuddled, without issuing a summons.
The lure that induced Beck to rush into the Massa interview seemed to be an allegation by Massa that his party’s leaders had conspired to oust him because of his opposition to President Barack Obama’s health care bill. He took full responsibility for his actions that sparked the ethics probe, Massa repeatedly told a skeptical Beck, but his resignation had more to do with the sinister machinations of leadership than with any drunken ticklefest involving the hired help.
Massa’s accusations against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Obama’s chief enforcer, Rahm Emanuel, on a Sunday morning radio program were seen by conservatives as evidence of continuing strong-arm tactics by a Democratic leadership intent on enacting the health care bill, come hell or high water. A spokeswoman for Hoyer said Massa’s complaint had “zero merit.”
Massa claimed he was the victim of a setup by his party’s leadership in order to reduce by one — to 216 — the number of “yes” votes needed for the House of Representatives to pass health care legislation compatible with the Senate version of the bill. The timing of the announcement concerning the ethics investigation was hardly coincidental, he suggested, considering that Pelosi had known since last October of the allegations of harassment that led to the probe.
From the get-go, Beck’s interview with Massa did not go well, smoking-gun-wise. Television viewers did not have to hold an advanced degree in body language to see that Beck was growing increasingly frustrated because he could not induce his talkative witness to tell viewers something they didn’t already know about chicanery in high places.
The talk show host demanded specifics; Massa responded mainly in generalities. After insisting that Massa cite chapter and verse to buttress his allegations of congressional corruption, Beck twice went to commercial break to get the interview back on track. When the show resumed, Massa remained in generality land despite Beck’s heroic attempts to lead him into temptation. The dialogue subsequently took on a hostile tone as interviewer distanced himself from interviewee. That’s when the wheels fell off the apple cart.
With time running out, it became clear that there would be no eviscerating of Emanuel, no pillorying of Pelosi. Ah, well. Perhaps another day, with some other disgruntled Democrat in this, their year of health care-induced discontent.
At show’s end, with Massa sitting little more than an arm’s length away, Beck apologized to viewers for having wasted an hour of their time. The audience did not get to see how the soap opera played out off-camera, but I’m guessing that that part of the show was probably even more memorable than Beck’s show-stopping apology.
If he could have a do-over on this one, Beck probably would conduct a bit more research before going on camera. To be fair to the popular television personality, he did issue a disclaimer at the start of the show, alerting viewers to the possibility that things could head south. He was going into the interview blind, he said, with no idea as to how it might turn out.
Now he knows.
BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may reach him by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.