Mitt Romney, high school bully?

[Landslide Lyndon]

I smell the Obama campaign behind this story's timing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_print.html

"Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections."




And Romney's usual mealy-mouthed apology.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/226653-romney-on-prank-back-in-high-school-i-did-some-dumb-things

Mitt Romney said Thursday that “back in high school I did some dumb things” but insisted that the prep school pranks chronicled in a news story were never intended to target gay students specifically.

“They talked about the fact that I played a lot of pranks in high school, and they described some that, boy, you just say to yourself, 'Back in high school,' you know, 'I did some dumb things.' If anyone was hurt by that or offended by that, obviously, I apologize. But overall, high school years were a long time ago,” Romney said on the “Kilmeade & Friends” radio program.

[Senator Napoleon]

Stop spamming.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Stick a fork in Romney. He's done.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Stop spamming.

Yeah, because posting a Washington Post article that is currently the first or second story on most political sites is obviously spamming.

Go get a life (and a dictionary) kid. 

[Meeker]

Wow, f**ck that guy. What a dick.

[Invisible Obama]

That will keep Romney in a negative light. It's things like this that really add up into poor favorable ratings. That's a seriously disturbing story.

[Lief]

This is even worse than the dog story. What the f[inks].

[Insula Dei]

Well, it's no news that Romney is a pretty horrible person.

[Senator Napoleon]

^Exactly.

[AmericanNation]

"The Washington Post can’t be bothered to worry about Barack Obama’s college years, college transcripts, communist friends, cocaine use, or cop-killing plotters in whose living room he first launched his major political career, but they can get in the really way back machine to 1965 and Mitt Romney’s high school years.

Mitt Romney cut a hippy’s hair at his preparatory high school. A day after Barack Obama caved on gay marriage, the Washington Post “coincidentally” says Mitt Romney cut the hair of a boy who “was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality.”

Let’s leave out the fact that the kid who got his haircut was subsequently thrown out of school for smoking one cigarette, but we’re to believe that the assailants of his hair, witnessed by many, were ignored. Oh, and the guy who got is hair cut never, ever, ever mentioned it, including to family, and died in 2004 so it can’t be verified. But a handful of students who now probably support Barack Obama have a crystal clear memory of events from 50 years ago. The people who were adults at the time of the incident and still alive have no memory of it, but remember Romney and said he was never a disciplinary problem."

what a joke of a story

[Californian Tony]

While I generally don't give much importance to revelations regarding a candidate's past or private issues, being a bully is one of the few things I consider as absolutely unforgivable.

Not that I liked Romney before, but this makes him definitively an asshole in my book.

[Senator Clarence]

I agree with AmericanNation- this is a story from nearly half a century ago that is impossible to verify and questionable parts of Obama's past get glossed over...

[Senator Napoleon]

I agree with AmericanNation- this is a story from nearly half a century ago that is impossible to verify and questionable parts of Obama's past get glossed over...

That will not change perception.

[Lief]

It wasn't "cutting a hippy's hair", you awful little person, it was a hate-crime assault. It's disgusting, and the fact that you're brushing this off and attacking the victim is just as disgusting. And you clearly didn't read the article at all, because the story is corroborated by four different sources, all on the record, some of whom are Republicans.

Anyway, there are more really troubling anecdotes in the article, but as has been pointed out, this behavior isn't really surprising. Romney is clearly a hateful, miserable coward, who's spent his entire life sheltered from real people and protected by his family's wealth. Maybe now people will stop believing this nonsense that Romney is at his heart a responsible moderate, who would love to come out for gay rights and what not, if only those darn conservatives weren't forcing him to spew right-wing hate.

"In an English class, Gary Hummel, who was a closeted gay student at the time, recalled that his efforts to speak out in class were punctuated with Romney shouting, “Atta girl!” In the culture of that time and place, that was not entirely out of the norm. Hummel recalled some teachers using similar language."

"Lou Vierling, a scholarship student who boarded at Cranbrook for the 1960 and 1961 academic years, was struck by a question Romney asked them when they first met. “He wanted to know what my father did for a living,” Vierling recalled. “He wanted to know if my mother worked. He wanted to know what town I lived in.” As Vierling explained that his father taught school, that he commuted from east Detroit, he noticed a souring of Romney’s demeanor."

[Lief]

And here's the section about the story's veracity, so that people can stop playing the "there's no way we can believe this" card:

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.

[ajb]

Well, those bits of Obama's past did get a pretty considerable airing in the 2008 primary and general election campaign, not to mention in some cases in a best-selling book authored by the candidate himself. Not to mention the ridiculous level of attention paid to completely groundless concerns about Obama (birth certificate? closet Muslim?). So I think it's a bit premature to complain about media bias here.
All that said, I doubt this story will have much impact. Voters tend to cut candidates quite a bit of slack for things they did when they were young.

[Meeker]

In addition to everything Lief said, I don't see how the media's supposed lack of coverage of Barack Obama's past is in any way a valid defense of Romney's actions here.

(Also the idea that the media has glossed over Obama's past is absurd - were you people under a rock in 2007/2008?)

[Senator Clarence]

I'd believe this occurred...but to say it is a hate crime is an incredible leap
Also- and I'm sure I'll get flack for this- bullying is normal behavior...it's wrong and should be punished, but doesn't make one "sick" or  a "psycopatch" if they bully others at a young age

[HagridOfTheDeep]

"What are you talking about? Of course the media isn't in bed with Barack Obama!"

[Invisible Obama]

I'd believe this occurred...but to say it is a hate crime is an incredible leap
Also- and I'm sure I'll get flack for this- bullying is normal behavior...it's wrong and should be punished, but doesn't make one "sick" or  a "psycopatch" if they bully others at a young age

Holding down someone and cutting their hair is not normal behavior.

[bgwah]

After watching his pro-Vietnam protest video, this definitely seems like something Young Mitt would do.

[Senator Clarence]

I'd believe this occurred...but to say it is a hate crime is an incredible leap
Also- and I'm sure I'll get flack for this- bullying is normal behavior...it's wrong and should be punished, but doesn't make one "sick" or  a "psycopatch" if they bully others at a young age

Holding down someone and cutting their hair is not normal behavior.

I've witnessed it countless times

[Lief]

"My cautious, provisional take is that this portrait of the youthful Romney does suggest a man who grew up taking for granted the comforts of wealth and prestige. I don't blame him for accepting the anti-gay assumptions of his era. The story does give the sense of a man who lacks a natural sense of compassion for the weak. His prankery seems to have invariably singled out the vulnerable -- the gay classmate, the nearly blind teacher, the nervous day student racing back to campus. It's entirely possible to grow out of that youthful mentality -- to learn to step out of your own perspective, to develop an appreciation for the difficulties faced by those not born with Romney's many blessings. I'm just not sure he ever has."

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/05/content-of-romneys-character.html

[Senator Napoleon]

No one rises to the top of the corporate world without being a dick. I wouldn't be surprised if Mitt is a sociopathic creep. He is a nerd and was probably bullied himself, and is taking it out on the world.

[ajb]

I'd believe this occurred...but to say it is a hate crime is an incredible leap
Also- and I'm sure I'll get flack for this- bullying is normal behavior...it's wrong and should be punished, but doesn't make one "sick" or  a "psycopatch" if they bully others at a young age

Holding down someone and cutting their hair is not normal behavior.

More to the point, it's not acceptable behavior.