Blogging from Phoenix—The breaking news on the Massa White House scandal turns out to be the depth of embarrassing blow back for FOX’s Glenn Beck and talk radio’s Rush Limbaugh.  The entire incident serves as a classic example of prematurely sounding the call to embrace a story before the actual facts have been gathered. 

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh heralded Eric Massa’s tale of a nefarious White House conspiracy, a dastardly plot lead by chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to push him out of the way of health care legislation so it could be rammed down the throat of a beguiled American electorate. We could expect Beck and Limbaugh promised, to hear at last and firsthand proof positive Barack Obama is little more than the shiftless politician and foreign born pretender to the Presidency they have warned against all along. Alas even as FOX and Limbaugh were winding up the news cycle, the story began to fall apart.

In less than a day the “proof” of a white house conspiracy to force a sitting United States congressman out of office because he was opposed to Barack Obama’s health care policy has imploded into revelations Massa is little more than a pervert who attempted to use his position in high office to sexually harass his staff and congressional pages. 

Conservatives who trumpeted a healthcare scandal should have headed the warning of responsible establishment republican’s who warned the folks at FOX Eric Massa was several bricks short of a full load as the affair is actually helping democratic efforts to move health care legislation along by taking the focus off a string of recent democratic scandals that were impeding house leaders who are attempting to gather enough votes to move the bill toward reconciliation.

As the truth of the conspiracy began to emerge, Rush Limbaugh simply denied having said anything to begin with, while Glenn Beck attempted to spin the responsibility on Massa leaving the mainstream media to reiterate its general view that FOX news lacks journalistic credibility to begin with and should be ignored.

The only winners seemed to be White House staffers who initially anticipated a weary week of distraction defending the chief of staff and were all smiles as the proverbial crapola reversed course and hit the fan over at FOX instead, leaving them free to continue talking up the poll excitement Obama’s speeches on healthcare has been generating.