Departing Rep. Eric Massa goes down swinging: Rahm Emanuel threatened me - in the nude!
BY David Saltonstall and Michael Mcauliff In Washington
It's the naked truth - according to alleged sex harasser Rep. Eric Massa.
The freshman upstate Democrat departed Congress on Monday after leveling lurid charges that fellow Democrats conspired to do him in.
He even accused the President's chief of staff of threatening him - in the nude.Massa, 50, a veteran Navy man, first said last week he would not run for reelection because of cancer. Then he said he was resigning to avoid a tough investigation into complaints he harassed a male staffer.But over the weekend, he went on local radio in upstate Hornell and ranted that fellow Democrats cooked up a conspiracy to force him out because he opposed their health care reform bill.
Somehow, he worked an awful lot of men without clothes into the tale.
Massa said White House enforcer Rahm Emanuel - whom he described as the "son of the Devil's spawn" - has berated him several times. One faceoff last year came in the showers at the House gym, which, Massa helpfully noted on WKPQ radio, lacks curtains.
"I'm sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling," said Massa. "Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?"
Emanuel, a regular at 5:30 a.m. workouts at the gym on Capitol Hill, had no comment. Democrats said Emanuel hasn't spoken with Massa for a long time.
That wasn't the only bare fact the embattled congressman brought up. The Annapolis grad also rambled to his small-town constituents about ribald episodes in his Navy days.
He described the Navy's notorious antics in the early '80s when ships crossed the equator, and crew members hazed first-timers.
"They went through chutes full of garbage, many of them naked," Massa recalled.
Another time, he walked in on a shipmate who was by himself and in a compromising position. "I smacked him on the leg, said, 'If you need any help with that, let me know,' and I went to bed," Massa said.
The point of the stories was mystifying, given Massa was accused of making a young male staffer uncomfortable. Massa said that incident came while he was hanging out with aides at the end of a booze-filled wedding party.
"I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, 'Well, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you.' And then
tousled the guy's hair and left."
Among those confused by Massa's wild fury are his upstate friends, who don't buy that he was the victim of a Democratic plot.
"He has more conspiracy theories than Glenn Beck does," said Hornell Mayor Shawn Hogan. "I think he has just gone over the edge."
Hogan said he planned to call Massa and tell him, "Eric, stop the madness."
But Massa's conspiracy stories are getting plenty of attention from the Tea Party set. Beck lined him up for a full hour on his show today.
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