Politicians and hot tubbing
As everybody knows by now, Representative Eric Massa resigned on Monday. The reasons given for his resignation have changed over the week. Initially, he was resigning because of health reasons. Then the Dems were pushing him out over his healthcare vote (he voted against it). As the week unfolded, more and more allegations of sexual inappropriateness and groping with male staffers have come to light. Republicans saw this as an opening and immediately tried to blame Nancy Pelosi, stating that she knew more than she let on and tried to cover it up. Oh, don’t forget that Massa was on Glenn Beck’s show for an hour, the whole hour. Both he and Beck crash and burn. Personally, I think it is clear that Eric Massa is a homosexual or has homosexual tendencies and I’m fine with that. The problem here is that Representative Massa appears to have used his position to force or coerce male staffers into compromising positions, which is wrong. The House Ethics Committee needs to reconvene in spite of the fact that Representative Massa has resigned. This is the second House member who has clearly misused his position. (Mark Foley is the other House member that should come to mind).
In a completely different story, Utah House Majority Leader Kevin Garn appears to have had an interesting incident 25 years ago which has come back to haunt him. It appears that he got together with a woman whom he described as “nearly half [his] age” got together in a hot tub. Of course, they were naked. The House Majority Leader was 28 years old at the time. Now, after a hard day’s work, sitting around in the hot tub can be perfectly relaxing. If you happen to have a hot tub in your backyard and it is appropriately secluded, being naked is your prerogative. On the other hand, being in a hot tub with a girl who was 15 years old should cause a 28-year-old man to get out of the hot tub and say “see you later.”
Garn released a statement which contain the following: “Shortly thereafter, my wife and I met with her, and at her demand, I paid her $150,000. While this payment felt like extortion, I also felt like I should take her word that the money would help her heal. She agreed to keep this 25-year-old incident confidential. Now that this issue is coming up again, it is apparent to me that this payment was also a mistake.” Wait a minute. Earlier in the statement, Garn stated, “although we did not have any sexual contact, it was clearly inappropriate, it was my fault.” I don’t understand. You and a woman are in a hot tub and neither of you have any clothes on. And you say there was no sexual contact? Seriously? What were you paying $150,000 for if there was no sexual contact? This sounds absolutely ludicrous.
Now, here’s the really crazy part of the story. Utah’s leading paper, the Desert News, had this story. They decided not to print the story because Kevin Garn was in the middle of a primary. They did not want to affect the outcome. Isn’t that nice of them? It turned out that Garn lost the primary and dropped out of politics. So the newspaper sat on the story for years. Why? This whole thing is a bunch of craziness.
-
Margaret
