3/10/2010

Why Glenn Beck Ought to Be Repeatedly Cock-Punched (Massa Edition):
Yesterday's meeting of demi-minds, when ex-Rep. Eric Massa went on Glenn Beck's Fox "news" thing, was like watching Borat for the first time. You didn't know who to laugh at more, but the whole thing was queasily delightful. In the end, the hour said very little about Massa and far, far more about the delusions of Beck and of his brand of right-wing victimization than anything else.

Massa is just a pathetic figure, even if he holds positions that would make Dennis Kucinich proud. Of one of the charges against him, he said, "Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday. It was kill the old guy." Five middle-aged men living together in DC, rolling around on the floor? It's either gangbang foreplay or it's brain damage. Even more fun was Massa proudly showing Beck an album of photos from his Navy days when Massa took part in a 1983 "crossing the line ceremony." That's when a ship crosses the equator, and there's a Bacchanalian ritual for the sailors who do so for the first time. Or, as Massa said, "Can you imagine transporting back to this today? It looks like an orgy in Caligula...And anybody who's been in the Navy knows it."

Yep, Massa is defending himself with one of the most homoerotic events that shipfuls of seamen participate in: "As the equator crossing ceremony began, for instance, it was common for initiates to pile upon each other and then be ordered to simulate sodomy. Featured in 'Bitch Beauty Contests,' dressing in drag was expected in the ceremony, often overseen by Neptune’s Court, including a Queen who gives mocking hugs and kisses to the King. Initiates were also told to simulate an 'elephant walk' in which a line of men moved while holding the genitals of the person in front of them or having a finger in his anus. To 'disinfect' or 'sanitize' selected individuals, senior sailors sometimes forced an initiate to strip and put tubes and other objects in the initiate’s rear end." Seriously, the Rude Pundit's been to actual gay orgies that were straighter.

But Massa is just another simpering closet case who will now go on to wreck his family because he can't deal with who he really is. The real result of the interview is to demonstrate, vividly, just how arrogant, narcissistic, and worthless Glenn Beck is and the utter failure of his model of television news-raping.

Beck was hyping the interview because he cravenly saw the Massa story as another way to pump up his conspiracy theories about the eeevil Obama administration. Without knowing the facts, or even seemingly having his staff do a pre-interview, on Monday, Beck promised, "I don't know the guy. But this is a moment that will decide the course of this nation possibly...You need to hear the explanations and the stories he told me today. I ask you, if you are a Republican or a Democrat, please listen to him and decide for yourself. Someone needs to expose the game. And Massa is doing it." You get that? Beck said that the Eric Massa story had the potential to change the country. And only Glenn Beck has the balls to allow this bull a free run around the china shop.

Even as the hour was beginning yesterday, Beck was fluffing the Massa tale like a crack whore with a rock-holding old man out of Viagra. "Is there anything new to his charges of corruption? We've told you about corruption on this program over and over and over again. When he says he's been intimidated -- oh, I believe it, because I've seen it firsthand myself," Beck offered, giving credibility to someone who was the victim of "nothing but hearsay, whispers and rumors. I'm going to be asking pointed questions today. But shouldn't a man be expected to face his accusers? Or is this now just a country of whisper campaigns?" Actually, Massa refused to face his accusers because he resigned, but that was just part of the conspiracy for Beck.

Then the interview started and, almost instantly, even a fucktard like Beck knew that the whole hour was going down in flames. When Massa showed Beck that book of the equator-crossing ceremony, the fat-faced bastard looked like he was gonna vomit. The rest of the show was a train wreck where the conductor and the guy in the caboose were crushed. Beck attempted a late rally, offering after a break, "He claims nothing happened. It's up to you to decide, I guess, if we're going to try this in a court of public opinion, which I think is un-American." Beck demonstrated that there's a reason that reporters do their jobs sometimes: in order to prevent such wrecks from occurring. Beck's belief in Massa was rewarded with squirming defensiveness, and the path of the nation seemed pretty damn stable.

But what became clear is that Beck doesn't have control of the story he is trying to create. That his cut-and-dried world of corrupt insiders and noble outsiders is an illusion. That what he believes, as clearly as ever, is, like Massa, a bundle of lies and hubris, a mental illness masked with chalk and bile.