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Mitt Romney: Gay bashing asshole
Fri, 2012-05-11 04:45
#1
Mitt Romney: Gay bashing asshole
Fri, 2012-05-11 04:57
#2
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.
Fuck. This. Guy.
Friedemann and several people closest to Romney in those formative years say there was a sharp edge to him. 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!"
Forty years on, Mitt Romney accepted the school's 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award.
A year earlier, John Joseph Lauber died at a Seattle hospital.
He came out as gay to his family and close friends and led a vagabond life, taking dressage lessons in England and touring with the Royal Lipizzaner Stallion riders. After an extreme fit of temper in front of his mother and sister at home in South Bend, he checked into the Menninger Clinic psychiatric hospital in Topeka, Kan. Later he received his embalmer's license, worked as a chef aboard big freighters and fishing trawlers, and cooked for civilian contractors during the war in Bosnia and then, a decade later, in Iraq. His 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."
Fri, 2012-05-11 07:29
#3
The only question that remains is whether or not the story is true:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/10/cracks-in-the-washington-post-story-on-romneys-pranks-emerge/
How can Romney's old pal Stu White tell the Washington Post that he has "long been bothered by the Lauber incident" - and then later admit to ABC News that he was "not present for the prank" and "was not aware of it until this year when he was contacted by the Washington Post"?
This is curious.
The Washington Post story reports: "I always enjoyed his pranks," said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney's who went on to a career as a public school teacher and has long been bothered by the Lauber incident."
But ABC News, says: "White was not present for the prank, in which Romney is said to have forcefully cut a student's long hair and was not aware of it until this year when he was contacted by the Washington Post."
Fri, 2012-05-11 09:23
#4
writer
From the Post:
“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and said he has been “disturbed” by the Lauber incident since hearing about it several weeks ago, before being contacted by The Washington Post. “But I was not the brunt of any of his pranks.”
Italics mine. Nowhere does it claim that White was present.
Where's the big discrepancy?
As for the ABC story that's supposed to put the Post's in question, it is titled "Romney Friend Stu White Says Campaign Wants Him to Counter Prank Accusations" and includes this gem: One former classmate and old friend of Romney’s – who refused to be identified by name – said there are “a lot of guys” who went to Cranbrook who have “really negative memories” of Romney’s behavior in the dorms, behavior this classmate describes as “like Lord of the Flies.”
A few hours later, ABC ran the story "Former Romney Classmate Describes ‘Bullying Supreme’ – A ‘Pack of Dogs’ Who Targeted ‘Different’ Boy" indicates 5 former classmates have come forward. The text begins:
A high school classmate of presidential candidate Mitt Romney told ABC News today that he considers a particular prank the two pulled at Michigan’s Cranbrook School to be “assault and battery” and that he witnessed Romney hold the scissors to cut the hair of a student who was being physically pinned to the ground by several others.“It’s a haunting memory. I think it was for everybody that spoke up about it … because when you see somebody who is simply different taken down that way and is terrified and you see that look in their eye you never forget it. And that was what we all walked away with,” said Phillip Maxwell, who is now an attorney and still considers Romney an old friend.
It goes on:
Asked if he has any doubt that what Romney did could be considered bullying, Maxwell responded, “Oh my god, are you kidding? … I castigated myself regularly for not having intervened. I would have felt a lot better about myself had I said, ‘Hey, enough.’”“When I saw the look on his [Lauber's] face, it was a look I’ll never forget,” said Maxwell. “When you see a victim, the sense of trust betrayed in this boy who was perfectly innocent for being different.”
“This was bullying supreme,” he said.
Maxwell told ABC News that he is a registered independent, generally votes for Democrats, but has voted Republican in the past. He said he would have voted for Romney’s father, George Romney, had he won the presidential nomination. He says he has not donated to President Obama, nor has he volunteered for him.
Maxwell said he believes the incident had to have some effect on Romney.
“I grew up with him. We were best friends in elementary school. We always remained friends. Mitt is wonderful, very bright, an enormously energetic human being … a friend all my life, but this was a side of him that I hadn’t seen,” said Maxwell.
Maxwell added that he believes this is relevant in a presidential campaign because it speaks to the “character” of Romney.
Fri, 2012-05-11 13:50
#5
Speaking of charachter, or lack there of, "Mitt Romney, childhood actions and character."
[This story]... is confirmation that Romney isn't just an insufferable dick today, but that he has always been that way. Had Romney responded to the bullying revelations with a heartfelt apology, admitted that his behavior was wrong, and called for an end to bullying in schools today, that would show the kind of maturation and growth in character that would render the issue into a positive for him. But of course, he didn't. He just doesn't think he ever did anything wrong.
So it's not so much his behavior as a child that's in question, it's his lack of maturation and growth as a human being.
It's relevant because we see the exact same Romney on the campaign trail—mocking the ponchos of NASCAR fans, laughing at the cookies proud Pennsylvanians had laid out for him at a picnic, talking about how much he didn't give a shit about the poor, torturing poor Seamus on family vacations, "joking" to unemployed people how he—rich asshole—was also "unemployed," laughing about Michigan auto workers losing their jobs, bragging about how much he loves to fire people, etc.
He's a dick. We suspected, sure, but now we know that he always was one. That he doesn't remember the incident is just more evidence that for him, being a bully was normal, average, status quo behavior for him. And no one remembers an average day.
Fri, 2012-05-11 14:09
#6
Mitt Romney's defenders speak out
Mitt Romney defended by wife and classmate over 'jokes'
According to Ann Romney, Mitt is still the "crazy" guy from high school who loves "playing jokes" on people. And according to his high school friend Gregg Dearth, Romney probably was merely acting "jokingly" when he bullied John Lauber. Dearth, who didn't witness the attack, imagined it was probably a barrel of laughs, the kind of thing that might "traumatize" or "scare" somebody, but "no harm, no foul."
So there you have it, folks. Mitt Romney was a crazy jokester who liked to traumatize and scare people unfortunate enough to be his lesser, but there's nothing wrong with that. And he's still the same guy today that he was back then. No harm, no foul.
Fri, 2012-05-11 15:05
#7
So there you have it, folks. Mitt Romney was a crazy jokester who liked to traumatize and scare people unfortunate enough to be his lesser, but there's nothing wrong with that. And he's still the same guy today that he was back then. No harm, no foul.
It is those sociopathic tendencies that made him rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams. He went from bullying high school peers to terrorizing companies and their employees. But it was all for the greater good.
I sometimes think that people like him need to be slapped about the head at least but then I realize the best punishment for him would be to strip him of his possessions and toss him onto the mean streets of inner city America.
Fri, 2012-05-11 15:13
#8
writer
Better yet, back into the streets he came from: they have less empathy there.
Fri, 2012-05-11 15:15
#9
bagkitty
[...]I sometimes think that people like him need to be slapped about the head at least but then I realize the best punishment for him would be to strip him of his possessions and toss him onto the mean streets of inner city America.
K: what do you have against the inhabitants of the mean streets of inner city America that you would force them to be up close and personal with this asshat? Mean as the streets may be, they shouldn't be a dumping ground. 
Fri, 2012-05-11 15:34
#10
You are right Bagkitty and Writer, maybe it would not be a good thing for the people of those communities and indeed dumping him poor and homeless in the middle of Palm Springs would be better.
Fri, 2012-05-11 18:48
#11
Nowhere does it claim that White was present.Where's the big discrepancy?
The Washington Post has amended their story (but it wasn't until the Ombudsman stepped in that they acknowledged they'd made a change):
Here's the original, emphasis added in both:
"I always enjoyed his pranks," said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney's who went on to a career as a public school teacher and has long been bothered by the Lauber incident. "But I was not the brunt of any of his pranks."
And the update:
"I always enjoyed his pranks," said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney's who went on to a career as a public school teacher and said he has been "disturbed" by the Lauber incident since hearing about it several weeks ago, before being contacted by The Washington Post. "But I was not the brunt of any of his pranks."
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/173701/washington-post-chan...
Fri, 2012-05-11 21:23
#12
Catchfire
Why the focus on Romney's bullying habits of yore? He has other qualifications too:
Is it worth pointing out he declined the draft in favour of converting the spiritually impoverished Fench to Mormonism? I'm not sure how well the French took being told they had to give up coffee, wine and sex...
Sat, 2012-05-12 08:04
#13
Maysie
Mean Boys by Charles Blow.
In an interview with Fox Radio on Thursday, Romney laughed as he said that he didn't remember the incident, although he acknowledged that "back in high school, you know, I, I did some dumb things. And if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize." He continued, "I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school, and some might have gone too far. And, for that, I apologize."
There is so much wrong with Romney's response that I hardly know where to start.
But let's start here: If the haircutting incident happened as described, it's not a prank or hijinks or even simple bullying. It's an assault.
.....
"if someone was hurt or offended, I apologize" isn't a real apology. Even if no one felt hurt or offended, if you feel that you have done something wrong, you can apologize on that basis alone. Remorse is a sufficient motivator. Absolution is a sufficient objective. Whether the person who was wronged requests it is separate.
Lastly, this would have been an amazing teaching moment about the impact of bullying if Romney had seized it. That is what a real leader would have done. That is what we would expect any adult to do.
Sat, 2012-05-12 14:25
#14
NEW YORK – When Mitt Romney was a good-looking teen in the buttoned-up '60s, corporal punishment was the norm and bullying had a different, more acceptable name: hijinks.
Were lynchings also hijinks?