It seemed like both interviewer and interviewee were dreading their encounter going into Eric Massa’s hour-long appearance on Glenn Beck’s Fox News program this afternoon. “I have other guests in the on-deck circle just in case,” Beck said at the start of the show. “You never know.” Massa himself said he went on because he wanted “the toughest, most unrelenting interviewer possible” (followed, apparently, by the opposite: He’ll be on Larry King this evening). And their conversation lived up to the prepared awkwardness. Beck, apparently astounded that Massa would resign over something so tiny as sexual harassment and offended staffers, kept appealing to Massa’s pride as a former military man. “Your honor is at stake!” he repeated over and over, urging Massa to fight back. (When discussing the issue at hand, an inappropriate male grope of sorts at a party, Massa described it thusly: “I tickled [my staffer] until he couldn’t breathe.” Whoa.) The congressman, for his part, tried to explain that the burgeoning scandal, his health problems, and pressure from the party were too much to bear all at once. But our favorite dance to watch was when Massa claimed full responsibility for his own problems, and Beck tried, over and over, to get him to blame it on somebody else. Honor, everybody!
