In Which a Battlestar Galactica-Inspired Sexual Innuendo May or May Not Decide the Fate of Health Care Reform


Frack me!

New York Democrat Eric Massa, who announced last week that he will resign from the House, claims he's being forced out by an administration hell-bent on passing a health care bill. "Now they've gotten rid of me and it will pass," Massa said, according to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. The pretext is what he describes as a "salty" remark at a New Year's eve wedding reception, which, in his telling, involves Battlestar Galactica's geek-and-censor friendly F-bomb substitute, "fracking." Fox News has Massa's version of the story:

Massa said he had just gotten up to sing Auld Lang Syne and had finished dancing with the bride and bridesmaid—in full view of cameras—when he sat back down at a table with male staff members. 

That's when he made the "inappropriate" remark. 

"One of them looked at me and, as they would do after, I don't know, 15 gin and tonics, and goodness only knows how many bottles of champagne, a staff member made an intonation to me that maybe I should be chasing after the bridesmaid, and his points were clear and his words were far more colorful than that. 

"And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, 'Well, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you,'" he said.

"And then [I] tousled the guy's hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where it wasn't right for me to be there. Now was that inappropriate of me? Absolutely. Am I guilty? Yes." 

But Massa said the staff member "never said to me that he felt uncomfortable" and "never went to anybody." 

Rather, he said "somebody went to another staff member who was uncomfortable for him. It was a third-party political correctness statement." 

Okay, so "fracking" is probably not the word he actually used.

Frack me too!

Whatever he did say, though, the end result is that, after declaring early last week that he would not seek reelection, Massa announced on Friday that he would resign due to ethics problems. But over the weekend, he let it be known that he thought the ethics complaints were bunk—an excuse to get him out of the seat and pass health reform. According to his account, he wasn't aware of ethics complaints against him at all until after his retirement announcement.

So is this a political power play? Or are House Democrats actually worried about Massa's behavior? It's tough to say. Massa's wedding story makes it seem as if leadership is using a basically harmless incident in order to push him out. But other reports indicate a history of complaints about his behavior, and there are some inconsistencies to his story. Politico, for example, details a potential problem with Massa's timeline:

Massa's assertion that he did not learn that he was under investigation by the ethics committee until after making his retirement announcement appears to contradict the facts of the case.

Joe Racalto, Massa's chief of staff, told a Rochester TV station on Thursday that he was interviewed by ethics committee investigators several weeks ago in regards to the sexual harassment allegations against Massa, well before the case became a public scandal or Massa announced his intentions to leave the House.

Just as odd, at least to me, is that Massa is convinced that he's the final vote on health care reform. It's true that his resignation gets rid of a probable no vote and, by reducing the number of total votes in the House, reduces the number of votes Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to come up with in order to pass the chamber's 50-percent-plus-one threshold. But Massa is a liberal who voted against the bill from the left (he supports single payer). And the real sticking points for the reform bill right now are the worries of moderate Democrats: abortion and cost control. For Massa's story to work, he needs to position himself as a pivotal vote, and while his resignation certainly won't hurt reform, it's not clear that it will be enough to push it over the finish line either.

Either way, though, it looks like at this point, Massa's legislative career is pretty well fracked.

Update: Or maybe not! Rumors are now circulating that Massa, who just scheduled an appearance on Glenn Beck tonight, may not actually resign.

NEXT: Attn, Ohio Reasonoids! Judge Napolitano and Ron Paul Taping Freedomwatch in Columbus Tonight!


  1. The legacy of BSG: a colossally disappointing end to the series, and stupid ass fake cursing. Even Farscape’s fake curses were less annoying.

    Massa watched BSG?

  2. Feel the love.

    In Fayetteville, Ark., the Epsilon chapter of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority [has] been stepping for some 16 years. [Alexandra] Kosmitis, who has been stepping with her sorority since she came on campus three years ago, said the chapter had been introduced to the tradition by a black sorority during a “unity night,” when white and black Greek organizations swap traditions, in the mid-1990s. Her sorority kept it up each year, competing on campus.

    When the team finished–to wild applause–emcee Ryan Cameron, a local radio personality, rushed onstage: “Whoa! Wow!” Then he playfully admonished the sold-out crowd of 4,600 fans, nearly all of them black, not to be so surprised that the evening’s only white contestants were that good. “Close your mouth! Close your mouth!” he said with a laugh. “Stepping is for everybody. If you can step, you can step.” But later, when it was announced that the Zetas won, the feel-good vibe evaporated. Large sections of the crowd starting booing. Then Internet and radio-call-in warfare broke out when the videos were posted on YouTube. There were allegations of cultural theft and reverse racism, not to mention race-based taunting and name-calling.

    Five days after the competition, Coca-Cola officials said they had discovered a “scoring discrepancy” and awarded the first prize, $100,000 in scholarship, to both the Zetas and the team that came in second, Indiana University’s chapter of the black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. The Post implies that a little reverse affirmative action was at work, noting that the supposed discrepancy “was odd, because the show’s host, rapper Ludacris, assured the crowd that the judges’ scores had been ‘double-checked.’ ”

    Anthony Antoine, a “a community activist and HIV prevention coordinator in Atlanta” who posted video of the Zeta routine to YouTube, is disheartened:

    “I watched a grass-roots effort of young people, black and white, play a key role in putting Barack Obama in the White House, and I thought it said so much about the best of this generation of America,” Antoine, 40, said in a telephone interview this week. “And then some white girls win a step competition and it exposes the worst of this generation of America.”…..95_pf.html

    1. I am way too lazy to read the article or look up whatever the fuck steppin’ is.

    2. Yeah, really clumsy thread-jack.

    3. Oh! It’s already been broughten!!!

    4. How is this relevant to anything anyone might be interested in? And what the fuck is stepping?

    5. And WTF is “reverse racism” and “reverse discrimination”?

    6. “Raaaaacist!!”

  3. One piece of name dropping trivia. I actually attended the wedding in question. The bride was one of Massa’s staffers and Massa kind of invited himself to the wedding. I, however, did not witness the incident in question and since there was an open bar for six hours, was too drunk to have been a reliable witness anyway.

    1. Who IS a reliable witness at a wedding? The priest? Recovering alcoholics maybe?



  5. Seems a little early for full scale intercene warfare in the Democratic party. I was expecting they’d wait until the healthcare fiasco had ended in tears before the drunken accusations started to fly.

    1. It’s “internecine”, you blithering dimwit–Christ, you’re worse than NutraSweet–and I agree. But there’s no accounting for the stupidity that is so rampant in both parties.

      1. This kind of stuff is how Obama rolls. This is straight out of Chicago. If they get Messa to resign that means they need one less vote for Obamacare.

        The only thing interesting or funny about it is that some Democrats actually thought it would be a good idea to put the Chicago machine in the Whitehouse. They would never go after one of their own right?

        1. Blah blah blah Chicago blah blah.

          Not everyone can be as principled as Karl Rove. After all, the gays really are out to get you.

  6. I for one could have done without the image of naked grey-haired congresscritters in the shower, poking each other with anything at all.

    But if it helps bring down Obama what the hell.

    1. Why do these guys shower together? I could see if it was Massa and some other congress person, but why is Rahm Emanuel showering with these guys? This is fucking hinkey.

      1. They have to shower several times a day in special NASA showers to get the filth of corruption off of them. Otherwise they reek of it even more than usual.

        1. The scenario Episiarch is describing should definitely find itself into a work of satire.

      2. Indeed. If Dick Cheney had been poking Chuck Hagel in the Senate showers, you can bet all the liberal reporters would have piled on but quick.

        1. Everyone back in the pile!

        2. Everyone back in the pile!

          1. PS. Don’t come back from lunch after two beers and spasmodically double click…

  7. Seems like Massa could have benefited from GOB Bluth’s big sexual harassment speech.

    1. Priceless. Gob for president!

  8. Or are House Democrats actually worried about Massa’s behavior?

    AHHAHAHAhahahaha . . . !

    Jeebus H, the same group that didn’t bat an eye at Barney Frank’s live-in lover using the FrankHaus in DC for gay prostitution, cares about a drunken exchange at a wedding reception?!

    1. Come on RC. Next thing you are going to tell me that they would be acting differently if he were voting yes on Obamacare. I am shocked.

    2. Or Gerry Studds’ actual fucking of an underage Congressional page.

  9. When it’s this close, anyone who’s willing to change their mind can claim to have the final vote.

    1. Actually, when its this close, every single Congressscum who votes for it can be blamed for passage.

      Every. Single. One.

  10. Rather, he said “somebody went to another staff member who was uncomfortable for him. It was a third-party political correctness statement.”

    Well, assuming that he has or would have voted for sexual harassment in the workplace laws (he is a NY Dem voting for single payer, so good chance), karma’s a bitch, pal.

    1. Assuming you are correct, it’s always entertaining to see politicians caught by their own bullshit legislation.

      (cough) Spitzer (cough)

      1. Hoist by their own retard.

        1. OMG, it is the perfect pun! Pee-Tard, Ree-Tard – Rahm said the “R” word…. damn, you are a genius.

    2. A wedding is not the workplace.

      1. Most sexual harrassment policies extend to outside the workplace if co-workers are present. I don’t know it it’s the same in govt as in numerous places in the private sector.

        1. It is. Or at least it’s the same in the military.

          1. The answer is “it depends,” but yeah, harassment laws generally extend to outside the workplace events with co-workers present.

            But, considering that Massa said this to an underling in his employment, the harassment laws kick right in, no matter where this was said.

        2. Generally only if attendance at the out-of-work event was mandatory.

          1. You can have sexual harassment at events which are employer-sponsored, with employees encouraged to attend, even though they’re not mandatory (such as company picnics). It’s also possible that SH regulations apply to workers on their lunch breaks off company property, but that’s not altogether clear, like a lot of SH jurisprudence.

        3. You know what the most infuriating part of SH law is? If you’re a statutory member of management and an employee from another business location, who you may have never seen before, relates a SH complaint to you, you are required by law to act on it. So if you’re at someone’s birthday party, drunk out of your mind, and a woman you’ve never met before tells you that some guy you’ve never met told a dirty joke in front of her, you’re in deep shit if you don’t report this to your superiors.


    Same here. On the other hand, it saves Sweet’n’Low the effort of having to invent it for his blog.

    1. Stranger than fiction, indeed.

  12. So, being in favor of nationalizing a big chunk of the U.S. economy is A-OK, but using a lame euphemism while drunk at a wedding is a political career-ender?


    1. You Gai a vote for forcing Massa’s resignation and you pick one up by giving that other guy’s brother a judgeship. It’s: The Obama Way?.

  13. Gai = gain

    1. I think it worked the first way, since the critical encounter was between two naked guys in the shower. And one of them a former ballerina.

      1. Get the the thing passed and then veto and filibuster to keep it in effect. And meanwhile have your creatures in the media call anyone who wants to repeal it “radical”.

  14. I never was a gym showerer. But the fact that these two guys are examples of who’s doing it, I doubt I ever will be, either.


  15. frelling dren!!!, farking huh

  16. Massa, who just scheduled an appearance on Glenn Beck tonight, may not actually resign.

    Maybe he’ll switch parties on live TV.
    Watch Pelosi’s face drop five inches.

    1. God that would be funny. But my guess is there is fire here and Obama and company just followed the smoke. Sorry, but I tend to disbelieve anything a desperate Congress critter says when cornered.

      1. Agreed. Massa actually seems like almost as huge a jerk as Emanuel. It would be great though, if he decided not to resign. It would help healthcare go down and it would serve to “embiggen” the public’s impression of democrat corruption. Hell hath no fury like a gay man’s spite.

    2. His district is a traditionally Republican area of upstate NY that just got fed up in ’06, so that might not be as unlikely as it seems, though he is a die-hard liberal.

    3. I doubt someone who voted against the health care bill because it wasn’t statist ENOUGH will switch parties, unless you mean pull a Bernie Sanders and go Socialist.

  17. The knowledge that our country’s most powerful men shower together is really going to liven up my Rahm/Barack slashfic.


    1. That is so very very disturbing.

  19. I’m just happy to see another news cycle down the tubes for the Dems and their health care abomination.

    I hope Massa doesn’t resign, just so he can vote against this thing. Really, what does he have to lose? His political career is already over; the only hold a blackmailer (I’m looking at you, ballerina boy) has over his victim is the threat of disclosure. Well, that cat’s out of the bag, isn’t it?

    1. He’s officially out. Bring on the crazy!

  20. He teabagged him too, right?

  21. Phil Hendrie says Massa’s name is racist!

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