Massa Discusses “Tickle Fight”

CREEPY EX-REP. Eric Massa answered charges he groped male staffers yesterday by admitting it – but insisting it was just a tickle fight.
“They’re saying I groped a male staffer. Yeah, I did,” he told Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck in a bizarre hour-long interview, just after The Washington Post reported the groping complaints against the upstate Democrat.
“Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me – my 50th birthday – it was kill the old guy,” the Navy veteran said.
Massa later told the Daily News he did not touch anyone in a no-no spot. “No, it wasn’t sexual at all,” he said. “It was horseplay. It was inappropriate horseplay.”
Massa told Beck that he should not have been such a, um, hands-on boss. Such pastimes as “salty” talk and guy-on-guy tickle tussles came from his Navy days, he said.
“I should never have allowed myself to be as familiar with my staff as I was,” said Massa, who shared a townhouse with bachelors on his staff. “I never translated from my days in the Navy to being a congressman.”
Massa also hinted there could be more shoes to drop.
“I’m sure there’s text messages,” he said. “We bantered back and forth all the time.”
What kind of text messages? “Inappropriate,” he told The News, refusing to spell it out.

Read more: (Kerry Burke and Michael McAuliff, “Massa Pickle Just a Tickle,” New York Daily News, 03/10/10)