Massa and Beck Fight Over Their Victim Status.

It's seldom that I am sad not to have full access to Fox News, but the clips Fox have released of Glenn Beck's interview with Eric Massa make me wish I could have seen the entire thing.

Beck is an expert at playing the "little man against the world" card, but he appears to have been outdone in this instance by Massa's victimhood.

Time:

Massa had come on Fox to out-Beck Glenn Beck. Armed with the very same weapons — a deep sense of victimhood, outrage at the powers that be and remarkable personal candor — the Representative delivered a dizzying confessional.

[..]

Beck, who is used to controlling the gravitational force of victimhood around him, kept interrupting to point out that he was a bigger target of even greater forces than Massa. "I have two unauthorized biographies coming out against me in the spring," Beck said at one point. Minutes later, Beck went even further. "Do you realize my family is at stake?" he said. "You've got a little scandal with your children in college. I've got one for all time now, because I am not going to resign. I'm not going to back down. I have come to a place where I believe at some point the system will destroy me."

But Beck could not compete with the oddity of the sympathy card Massa kept pulling. He appeared frustrated that Massa wasn't revealing any more sinister plots afoot in the nation's capital, and he got visibly annoyed when Massa tried to take some measure of responsibility for his actions and attempted to walk back some of his more heated rhetoric against White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

And to make things worse, when Massa turned from discussing his own woes to the machinations of Washington, he offered ideas that have no place in Fox News's tightly regulated framework. Massa suggested that Beck and other Americans demand "campaign finance reform" to curb the corruption on Capitol Hill. Beck, who has called such proposals a "huge mistake," put his hand over his mouth, as if he were holding back an upset stomach. Massa, who has opposed Obama's health reform because it is not liberal enough, told Beck that he should stop calling people names like "socialist" and "communist." "You can be a progressive and be a fiscal conservative," Massa then explained, as Beck lost control of his own program.

To listen to Beck, the man who earned $25 million last year, tell us that he only suffers the abuse he does in order to leave behind "a better America", must be music to the ears of his supporters, but it's simply bunkum to anyone else.

You can watch what Fox have released here. It's TV gold watching Beck's puzzlement as Massa plays the victim and steals Beck's clothing, whilst refusing to deliver the Democratic heads on a plate which Beck thought he had been promised. And to watch Beck sit silent as Massa condemns those who engage in name calling - Socialist, Marxist, the kind of terms Beck often throws around - is simply hysterical.

Beck rarely invites opposition on to his show. It's quite clear why.

The transcript is here.

UPDATE:

Jon Stewart nails it as only he can:

At the end of the hour with Massa, accused of 'groping' his staffers, Beck declared to the camera, 'America, I'm gonna shoot straight with you. I think I've wasted your time. I have wasted an hour of your time. And I apologize for that.'

Stewart: "It appears that Glenn Beck has come up with his new sign off phrase. His 'Good Night and Good Luck.' Every show he can now end with: 'I think I've wasted an hour of your time. And I apologize for that. See you tomorrow.'"

Tags: Beck, Massa, Fox News