Right-wingers have responded to the revelations about Mitt Romney’s bullying high school ways in the only way they really can: by denying it has any relevance. Who could be so cruel as to judge a man by his worst behavior in adolescence?
Or, as I saw it sarcastically argued today on the Twitter Machine, “The fact is, boys will be boys. Who among us hasn’t shoved a crippled kid down a flight of stairs?”
Which, of course, points out that while many, if not most, of us have at some point been bullies or bullied, at least none us ever strapped anyone to the roof of our car.
Or led a gang of preppies on a hate-filled sortie to pin a queer kid down on the ground and clip his bleach-gold locks against his will?
Yet, as I said before, that was almost fifty years ago. What matters is not what Romney did then, but what he does today. And, today, he denies any recollection of the event. That’s a character flaw. It doesn’t seem like anyone else that was there that day ever forgot it.
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 identified.
The victim never forgot it.
Sometime in the mid-1990s, David Seed noticed a familiar face at the end of a bar at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
“Hey, you’re John Lauber,” Seed recalled saying at the start of a brief conversation. Seed, also among those who witnessed the Romney-led incident, had gone on to a career as a teacher and principal. Now he had something to get off his chest.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to help in the situation,” he said.
Lauber paused, then responded, “It was horrible.” He went on to explain how frightened he was during the incident, and acknowledged to Seed, “It’s something I have thought about a lot since then.”
…[Lauber’s] hair thinned as he aged, and in the winter of 2004 he returned to Seattle, the closest thing he had to a base. He died there of liver cancer that December. He kept his hair blond until he died, said his sister Chris. “He never stopped bleaching it.”
Seems like he went to his grave cursing Mitt the Shit.
And Romney doesn’t remember it? That’s a problem.
And here we all thought Frothy Mix was big jerk.
Or they’ll do their usual, “Rubber Glue!” dance that we’re actually the bullies against the poor, helpless corporations and Koch Brothers, as Steve M points out;
Malkin really is a bloomin’ idiot, isn’t she?
She said the same thing, probably a little better.
.
“There’s a wild and crazy man inside of there just waiting to come out,” Romney’s wife, Ann — a graduate of Cranbrook’s sister school, Kingswood — attested in a television interview this month, evoking what she saw as his endearing and fun-loving prep-school persona.
Cranbrook had all the trappings of an elite school where kids walked around like junior executives and, as Tom Elliott, Class of 1966, recalled, learned mantras such as, “Remember who you are, and what you represent.” The Cranbrook School is also the model for the preparatory school portrayed in Edmund White´s controversial and classic autobiographical novel A Boy’s Own Story.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Imagine that wild and crazy man in charge of nuclear weapons.
These incidents are definitely relevant to the job for which he is replying. To any person with a conscience, doing something like this would haunt them every day of their adult life. No person with any sense of remorse or guilt could possibly “forget” about these episodes and actually laugh about it when asked to recall it.
Why are the Republicans lead by sociopaths? And I mean that in the clinical sense.
oops. “applying,” not “replying.”
Right on, Randy. I did things in High School that I’m ashamed of, nothing violent but hurtful of other’s emotions. Fifty years later one should be regretful of youthful stupidity and arrogance, not continuing to be stupid and arrogant. That is, one should mature.
If Romney were a Democrat, wingers would claim that he’d had Lauber bumped off in 2004.
What is worse, that Romney really doesn’t remember leading such a memorable assault, does remember but thinks his actions were justified, or actually is privately sorry for what he did but believes that it would hurt him politically to admit it?
It seems obvious that the politically expedient thing for Romney to do, assuming that the accounts are true (which seems very likely), would be to express remorse, apologize, and say that he’s “grown” since then (the word “evolved” is taken) and deeply regrets the actions of his youth.
The fact that he isn’t doing that raises the sort of questions that you have posed, and none of the answers looks at all good for Romney.
But let me propose an alternative. Romney’s attitude might be that what happened was no big deal, and he really is confused about why people are acting like it is significant now. Romney went to this exclusive school, about which I know nothing, but let’s assume it was modelled on the British boarding schools. I know about British boarding schools from having seen the movie “If…”, and what you see in that movie is there is a lot of aggressive behavior of the students toward each other, especially older students tormenting students from the lower forms. And this behavior is not merely tolerated; it is regarded as an integral part of the institution. It is a perk of being an upperclassman that you have license to treat the younger boys in that fashion. So what Romney and his pals did may have been perfectly normal and acceptable behavior at that time and place.
But how in the world can that ever be explained to the public? The rules that Romney and the other boys from wealthy families grew up with aren’t the rules that the rest of us lived by. To see Romney’s behavior in context requires us to see just how remote Romney’s world is from the world that most of us live in. Either we judge Romney by our standards, which is a political disaster for him, or we learn enough about his world to judge him by his own standards, which is a political disaster for him.
So there is really nothing Romney can do.
No Republican would dare use the word, anyway. The base doesn’t believe in evolution, don’tcha know.
I think it was Jonathan Capehart who made the observation that Romney has a quiet sort of reaction to being challenged these days. He explained that you may come home that night and your house has been burned sort of thing. He may well be right and Romney may have evolved with more passive aggressive tactics.
Seamus had his episode years after the high school episode yet Romney’s factually challenged dealing with it was the same road that he chose here.
This all points to the core we’ve been looking for. Finally, Romney defined.
Now he really IS like Reagan.
I don’t recall.
Which is, after all, the point. Fix the level of competition and you fix the fight. A legal fix, like legal graft.
The magnificently crooked Tammany Hall machine pol George Washington Plunkitt defined the game thusly.
(Guess which one’s ol’ Georgie boy.)
Same same today, only…only it’s a much, much bigger and more complex machine. Put almost every one of today’s big-time pols or influence pushers up against a wall and drop some sodium pentathol into what psses for their bloodstream and you will get an information age version of the same self-serving spiel that Plunkitt was laying down. From Obama right on down through Rick Perry or Santo Santorum. The lack of this quite automatic lying is what is “attractive” (for want of a better word) about the real financial pirates like Romney and the rest of the Bain/Lehman/Solomon Bros.-style profiteers. Romney is not a “flip-flopper,” he is merely a thief consciously trying to step up to the next (and highest possible) level of thievery. He doesn’t “flip-flop,” he just lies his ass off because the truth would immediately disqualify him from higher thief status.
This image alone is all you need to know about him.
Dog-tying and weakling bashing?
Mere bagatelles.
Vicious and utterly conscienceless theft?
Thar she blows!!!
Here’s Alderman Plunkitt again.
Slightly modrenized:
Yup. That’s where the real fixers are coming from. The real controllers. Romney was chosen because he is so transparently venal. Compared with the self-deluded but oh-so-gifted Obama?
Romney’s a fucking chump.
And he’s gonna go down in the early rounds.
Watch.
He may have already hit the canvas for the first time this week.
My own sole remaining interests in this particular
scam(s)election involve:1-How the controllers will spin it so that it continues to look competitive
and
2-What factors that are out of their control will interfere with the ongoing plot. (Remember, there is a big, seemingly random universe of possibilities out there that can chew up the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men like they were candied popcorn snacks.)
Stay tuned, ladies and gents.
Stay tuned to the BIG, big network.
Radio Universe, on the air 24/7.
Since The Very Beginning.
Later…
AG
P.S.
The prophets speak to the future from a past that still is. A past that still exists in another universe or two or twenty. Or more. (∞)
Stay tuned, bunkies.
There’s more a’comin’.
That’s a promise.
There’s always more.
Until the end of time.
Watch.
Rachel Maddow had an exceptional segment on this last night, pointing out Romney’s penchant for highly inappropriate laughter when confronted by his bad behavior. Connecting the dots. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/47381279#47381279
Y’know…i gotta step up here. It is obvious from my previous post that i have no use for Romney whatsoever, but here’s the thing. R. Money and I are pretty much contemporaries. If you were not in a school in any neighborhood with which I had any contact whatsoever in 1964 (working class right through upper middle class and the children of the fairly rich), you simply did not think much if at all about “gay” and “non-gay” people. Some people were relatively weak in some respects and got pushed around by some others, but it wasn’t because they were “gay,” it was because they were weak and “different.” Now…you could be “different” and strong enough/smart enough to avoid the bullying, but if you were not? Some prick like R. Money was going to make your life miserable. Why? Not because he hated “gays,” just because he got off on pushing others around.
We had a guy in my middle and high school years…grossly overweight, very introverted and arguably something of a mathematical genius…who was bullied to the point of tears in gym class every day of his life. He wasn’t “gay” as far as I know…he’s married now, has kids and I believe works producing various weapons of mass destruction, probably for the same kinds of assholes who made his own young life so miserable…but it wasn’t about sexual preference, it was about being displeasingly ugly and weak to some others.
A year later, as a freshman in college I was given a roommate who “just didn’t fit in.” Most of the people in the dorm were just regular folks of the time…beer drinkers, cigarette smokers, female chasers and Playboy oglers. This guy couldn’t stand tobacco smoke, didn’t drink or hang out, and lived quite a solitary life as a result. He was asleep by 9PM every night, whereas I…well, I like to hang. It just wasn’t working. I asked him to move to a single room and trade with a friend of mine, but he didn’t want to and no one in the dorm…maybe 200 boys…wanted to live with him. So one afternoon about 40 of us went to the shared room, closed all the windows and then smoked disgusting amounts of the vilest tobacco products we could find with the windows and doors shut. Then we left and waited in the main room of the dorm for him to return from class. He opened the door, was engulfed in the smoke and ran crying to the house master. A couple of days later he dropped out of school. I regret doing this now, but there’s more to the story.
Maybe 10 years later I was driving in a remote area of Long island and passed a motel that had this kid’s last name on it. I remembered that he was from that are and that his parents had owned a motel, and in the ensuing 10 years I had lived maybe 2 1/2 decades…I had seen a lot of stuff and changed radically in every way. As I said, I regret doing what I had done and I regretted it at that moment, so I pulled into the motel in the remote chance that he might be there or someone might know how to contact him so that i could apologize.
He was there, behind the desk. Like I say, I had lived a great deal in the ensuing decade of so, and when I walked into the office there he was, as plainly homosexual as it was possible to be in 1974 and still make it down the street in one piece. And it simply had not occurred to me at the time of the incident that “sex” had a goddamned thing to do with the situation.
Now…I changed and R. Money quite plainly hasn’t, but here’s the thing. I think he is telling the truth about not “thinking” about sexual preference. He just didn’t like the little fella and he was the type to make those dislikes plain on a day-to-day basis. I didn’t do much bullying…it’s simply not my thing…through most of my young life and besides, I was usually too busy making sure that the bullies didn’t think that I was an interesting target…musician, poet, voracious reader, not involved much in team sports, etc. I became the class clown/class rebel as a protective device; I did manage to have some lovely girlfriends and I was known to hit back as well. So it went, and to some degree so it goes to this day.
I did apologize to him, and he did…albeit rather reservedly…accept my apology. I can’t begrudge him that. What we did was right out of “Lord Of The Flies.”
So anyway…mea culpa. (And who doesn’t have a mea culpa or two or three laying away back there in their past? Let that one throw the first stone.)
But this thing about R. Money being a bully because the kid was homosexual?
Naaaaahhhh…I don’t believe it.
He’s just a natural-born asshole, He don’t need no excuses. And…not remembering? Hell, he probably bullied people as often as most of us made long distance calls. Do you remember every long-distance call you made during high school? Of course not. And he doesn’t remember each act of bullying.
Hell…later he did that for a living.
Bain.
I looked it up in the dictionary.
The Urban Dictionary.
Like dat.
Preznit R. Money, aka “Da Bainer” ?
Not looking likely.
Not looking very likely at all.
Bet on it.
I am.
AG
P.S. That nervous laughter thing that Maddow points out? He’s covering for his absolute and complete lack of understanding regarding society’s reaction to some of his actions. Like an age-related dementia patient, he simply doesn’t get it. It’s not age-related with him though. It’s class-related. Wikipedia states:
They forgot “classist dementia.”
It’s very common, actually.
Very common.
It runs in families.
Families with very large bank accounts.
Bet on that as well.
3rd sentence.
“If you were in a school…”
Duh.
AG
If you took all the kids who smoked tobacco products in your room and asked them today if they remembered it, the one that didn’t would be the sociopath.
Personally, I think his forgetfulness is tactical. If he admits to remembering it, he’ll have to explain himself. “Forgetting” makes it easier to and shortens the natural life of the story. He looks worse in May in order to look better in June. Survive to fight another news cycle.
As to your other point, it’s quite possible that he wasn’t thinking too much about his sexual orientation, but to deny that he was at the same time that he denies recollecting the event, is too disingenuous even for Romney.
And that’s what he did.
No, Booman. I have to tell you…in that time and place, “gay” wasn’t even a afterthought most of the time. If someone came up to me today and accused me of having been involved is some sort of shitheaded foolishness of the sort with which R. Money is dealing that I absolutely, positively do not remember and then said that it had been done because of some sort of homophobia on my part, I would categorically deny the homophobia accusation even though I had no idea about the act itself or the people involved. Not because I was such an open-minded little prick…I wasn’t…but because the society itself was so homophobic that “homosexuality” wasn’t even a serious consideration. They didn’t call it “the sin that dare not speak its name” fer nuthin’, y’know. Hell, man…if a whole society could accept Tab Hunter as a hetrosexual romantic hero for 10 or 15 years…I mean, come on!!! Blind doesn’t even begin to touch it. “Blinded” might be more like it. Blinded, deafened and dumbed.
Please!!!
Is R. Money a devious, waffling, upper class prick politician?
Yes.
Of course.
He’ll fuck up anybody that he feels like fucking up.
Why paint him as a homophobe? That only covers a little part of the problem.
He’s a homo sapiens phobe.
AG
P.S. Romney stole his haircut from Tab Hunter.
Only R. Money has a bigger…
Chin.
Tee hee.
you misunderstood me.
Or, maybe you’re just taking your argument too far.
I get your point, and largely accept it.
But people weren’t that blind. “Hey, do you think the new kid down the hall is some kind of queer?”
“Yeah, he sure seems like a nancy-boy.”
People still acted gay in the 1960s. People still picked up on it. Those people were still magnets for abuse.
But my point was narrower than that. He said he doesn’t remember the incident but he knows what his motivation was or wasn’t. All his friends remember this kid as being though of as gay. He wasn’t there too long. I think it’s obvious that it is was subject of overt speculation. You can’t say that you don’t remember doing it but you’re sure you didn’t do it because of the common feeling that he was gay.
In other words, he might have done it because he hated his hairstyle, but he remembers doing it.
Man…in 1962? 1963? Not happening. It wuz big tits ‘n horny teenagers. Across the board.
I quite literally do not remember much if any speculation about “gay” people until about 1965/’66. Literally. Nobody gave a fuck. After JFK got shot? After the nation lost its innocence? After the “youth revolution? ” The “sexual revolution?” Everything changed. Before then?
Truth.
“The sin that dared not speak its name.”
Truth.
Sorry.
I’d like to tar and feather R. Money at least as much as anyone else, but there it is. A t least tar and feather him for his real crimes. The tar and feathers will stick better that way. Bet on it.
AG
Arthur, the FIRST sentence in the article says, “BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — 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.”
Okay?
Tony rich people schools? 1965 came a little late.
Like maybe 2000.
When did you go to high school, Booman?
AG
I began high school in September 1984 at Princeton High School, which is a public school that is routinely ranked as one of the top three public schools in New Jersey, which is routinely ranked as one of the best states for public education in the nation. After a rough start, I spent my sophomore year at a prep school in Maine before returning to PHS for the rest of my education. PHS should’t really be looked at as a public school. It’s basically and Ivy League prep school because a quarter of its students are the children of professors and and most of the rest are children of people who work on Madison Avenue or Wall Street. Well over 90% of my class went to college and most of them went to top 100 schools.
It was a hyper-competetive environment.
Among my closest friends, one’s father was the co-head of the English Department and the top Shakespeare expert in the country, another was one of the top astro-physicists (recruited away by Stanford), another was a professor of Near-Eastern studies, and another was half near-eastern half-CIA analyst.
As for my family, one grandfather was the head of the Kalamazoo hospital and the other created the first Art History program in Canada before working at Iowa and UCLA. One uncle was a professor of Medical Technology at the University of Buffalo, another was a professor of Theater at the University of Georgia, another is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia. My father was briefly a professor of Marketing Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
So, make of that what you will, but my family background is in higher education and my childhood was based in the milieu of high academic achievement, surrounded by brainiacs who had very privileged upbringings.
1984?
So?
I repeat, it has been my experience that protected schools of that sort are a little slow on the uptake as far as societal changes are concerned. I remember doing some work at a famous New England prep school as late as the late ’70s/early ’80s and thinking…”Where’ve these boys been at all this time?” They still pretty much looked, acted and related to the world as did prep school boys before the big change…say 1968/69 for want of a more exact date. The hair was a little longer and they aped someone other than Pat Boone…maybe Paul McCartney/John Lennon… but otherwise? Not that different.
I tend to believe R. Money here. It’s not a defense of him…maybe he was, is and always will be a raving homophobe…but on the evidence of how far he has caught up to mainstream American culture even now? I mean, really…he looks and acts like Ronnie Reagan’s kid brother, all grown up and about ready to step into the late ’70s…I imagine that he was still living in a time warp somewhere just after the end of WW II when he was in prep school.
In other words…he didn’t know shit from Shinola.
Where’s the argument?
Because I snarked “2000?”
Please.
Poetic license.
Please.
AG
I feel kind of the opposite about my high school. In some ways I agree with you, but not on your main point. Because we had our own spur off the main railway line into Manhattan, we spent a lot more time there than kids in neighboring towns. You could bike down there on the weekend and go into the city and your parents wouldn’t even know you’d been there.
So, for example, the music scene was more diverse. We were listening to rap before other people, and a lot more kids were into punk, hardcore, new wave, reggae than you would find elsewhere.
On the other hand, we were insulated from a lot of mainstream culture. Most people wouldn’t be caught dead in a mall, while other towns, they’d take the bus to the mall just to hang out. Our town was a lot nicer place to mess around than a mall, and the campus offered endless choices for mischief. Kids in neighboring towns would work all summer to buy a Trans Am or a Camaro. We couldn’t understand why cars were so important and why’d want a muscle car in the first place. We’d work all summer to buy stereo equipment or pay for a trip abroad.
So, we were definitely different in some ways, but definitely hip to what was happening in the city.
The problem was that my high school years coincided with both the height of the AIDS and the crack epidemics. I remember being scared I’d get AIDS just by going to a bar in the city. We weren’t hostile to gay people but we were worried about them. Those were really fearful times, and certainly not a good period for the gay community.
We didn’t have very many gay kids in our school. There was one girl who people talked about a lot because she had fooled around with a few girls. But she dated guys, too. I remember another girl who was basically open about it. No guys though. One of my closest friends came out in college and I was surprised. I hadn’t picked up on it. He didn’t exhibit any of the stereotypical traits. Even to this day though I can’t think of any other guys who came out during or after high school. I think one guy who killed himself when he was about 20 might have been gay, but I never really knew for sure.
People called each other faggots and homos quite a bit, but it was just a put-down, not meant literally.
Weak kids and very shy kids got picked on a lot, especially if they were quirky. But I never saw anyone get picked on for being gay or being suspected of being gay. It was a fairly enlightened culture in the respect. Very liberal minded.
One thing that has definitely changed is that back then no one would have ever admitted to being bi-curious or confused about their sexuality. Today, kids admit as much all the time. I’m not sure what changed and gave kids permission to be honest about that stuff.
Awwww…I’ll bet most of them don’t remember it. It was no big thing to them. Only…I was the instigator and I am cursed with a conscience. So it goes.
AG
So true, a 4 seems inadequate.
Thank you, Alice.
It’s not like he’s alone in that category.
He’s just got a bigger toilet to foul.
AG
Maybe it’s relevant enough to be worked through proxies, but I hope the campaign stays the hell away from this and asks their more prominent friends to leave it alone as well. As much as this proves to us that Mitt is an asshole, it also proves to wingnuts that he’s an asshole — and that will drive their turnout up rather than down.
Sad as it is, I think politically this is a story we’re better off allowing to die.