Glenn Beck Finally Admits During Interview with Rep. Massa: I Have Wasted Your Time

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by Jeffrey Joseph

Glenn Beck, the pundit who has responded to questions about his inept fact-checking by simply claiming he is a "commentator," not a journalist, hoped to bring Rep. Eric Massa onto his show for some hard-hitting revelations about the Obama Administration. Instead, Beck could only muster an admission from himself that holds true of much of his programming when he said, "America, I'm gonna' shoot straight with you. I think I've wasted your time."

Massa has had a host of problems attached to his resignation this past week, so it was unsurprising that Beck thought Massa would offer a juicy interview. Massa had initially discussed not seeking reelection due to health concerns, but the story quickly changed to that of him resigning in advance of the 2010 elections due to ethics complaints from a male staffer who said he felt "uncomfortable" in interactions with Massa. Massa had no intention of fighting the allegations, telling a newspaper, "I am guilty," and opting to resign. In a radio appearance, he went on to say, "My difficulties are of my own making, period," and that "during long car rides in the early hours of the morning and late at night and always in private, I know that my own language failed to meet the standards I set for all around me and myself."

What really excited Beck and other conservatives came from a later part of that radio interview where Massa fairly transparently accused the Obama Administration of orchestrating the fiasco when he claimed, "I was set up for this from the very, very beginning. If you think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the healthcare bill, then ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what is going on in Washington, D.C." For Beck, bringing on Massa would either mean talking to a Democrat about ethics violations that Massa clearly accepted or the possibility of gathering evidence of the administration strong-arming members of its own party, if not both.

The interview Beck actually obtained, though, would leave him whining long after it had finished about how it ruined his week. Massa did respond to allegations about groping a staffer fairly candidly. As he said, "Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday." Talk of tickle fights proved hardly the stunning, exclusive admissions Beck the "commentator" wanted from someone who had already conceded telling a male staffer, "What I really ought to be doing is fracking you."

Furthermore, Massa appeared to walk back some of his accusations regarding the administration trying to force his vote, or at least standing by no specifics other than one where Massa claims a nude Rahm Emanuel confronted him in a gym shower over a vote. In light of the already awkward discussions of tickling his staffers, coupled with his resignation and acceptance of personal culpability, Massa's gym shower story is hardly new ammunition for Beck against the administration or the Democrats at large.

The FOX host's inability to elicit a more revelatory interview from Massa -- from whom Beck should have not expected a sympathetic interview since Massa previously called for the firing of FOX personalities -- led to Beck's telling admission. "I think I've wasted your time," said Beck. "I think this is the first time I have wasted an hour of your time, and I apologize for that." Indeed, he did waste the time of his viewers, pretending to be a trustworthy source of information cloaked in the description of "commentator" to excuse his lack of any journalistic integrity and ultimately having nothing of substance to show his audience for it.

Of course, while Beck grew irritated with Massa for not going far enough in the interview, Beck himself stopped short of the full admission he should have offered not only for the show he put on that night, but for the ones he puts on every other night. It's time for viewers to accept that Beck's transparent anger over a paucity of evidence to support his radical theories against the administration shows just how little time he ever warrants -- and choose to Turn Off FOX.

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Originally posted at Turn Off FOX.

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