Apparently Mitt Romney is a homophobe and a bully from way back. Update, Romney responds.

"First off let me just say that I don't remember this incident. But if it happened, the guy had long hair, so he totally deserved it!"

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

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. 

“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.” 

“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.” 

“He was just easy pickins,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it. 

The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall. 

Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.

Seriously, WTF? Well I guess now we understand why Romney won't support gay marriage!

Okay now before I start ripping into Romney, in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I was once attacked in a elementary school bathroom by a bunch of older kids who wanted to cut my long hair. (I managed to escape and the boys were expelled for their actions.) So I may have some built in anger toward anybody who would bully somebody due to the length of their hair. However, to be honest, I have a lot of built in anger towards bullies in general, which I will share in a few minutes.

Now the excuse can be made that this incident happened a LONG TIME AGO. And that is fair, but it also demonstrates a character issue.  While true that prejudice can change over time, and that bullies can grow up to be contributing members of society, it is hard to  argue that a person who does not demonstrate empathy for other people at a younger age, suddenly develops it when they are older.

And in fact much of the criticisms toward Romney stem form his inability to "feel other people's pain," which this incident aligns with perfectly.

It is one thing to dislike a person's appearance, or even to call out an insult to demonstrate that dislike, but Romney attacked this young man, and encouraged others to assist him in the boy's humiliation.

That is WAY beyond a "high school prank."

In 1965 Romney was eighteen years old, easily old enough to determine the difference between right and wrong. And if he did not know it then, what makes us think he knows it now?



Okay time to get a little personal here.

When I was in high school I also had a reputation.  And it was not a very good one by many standards.

I was quick to anger and carried a huge chip on my shoulder right up until my senior year where I actively tried to change my reputation, and become a more contributing member of my school by joining the yearbook staff and the school newspaper.

However in all of the physical encounters I had in school, NONE of them were with students that were younger or smaller than me.  In my mind that would have been wrong.

When I was seventeen I walked into a locker room where a bunch of older boys were holding down a freshman and shoving his wet underwear in his nose and mouth. Apparently they saw pee stain on his tighty whiteys and decided to humiliate him. (And why NOT?  He was younger, a little chubby, and quickly started to cry pitifully. What fun, right?)

My first instinct was NOT to stand there and laugh along with the other kids who were just glad it wasn't them, or to jump in and help the older "cool" kids. My instinct was to pull them off and start handing out ass-kickings, which is exactly what I did.

In the end we were all hauled down to the office and the three older boys were suspended, while I received a rather pointed lecture about solving my problems with words instead of my fists. (That lecture did not take by the way.)

Those older boys told me that they would make me sorry for interfering,  and at least two of them were not bluffing. However that is another story for another day. (I will say that things did not go as they had hoped however.)

The point is that at seventeen, and even well before seventeen, I understood that I did not have the right to inflict punishment on somebody just because they were different from me, or simply because  I could.  I also recognized that when you see a fight of three against one, that the ONE is the guy that needs to be defended, NOT the three!

At eighteen years old Mitt Romney should have known that as well. The fact that he didn't is something that I think speaks to the character issues that we still see reflected in his actions and statements today.

And by the way it is not lost on me that his incident sounds VERY much like a certain incident that happened in Wasilla to a local black. (Gee maybe the Palin really DO have something they can find to support in Mitt Romney!)

Update: Romney has responded to this story on, where else, Fox News:

"I don't remember that incident," Romney told Kilmeade. "I tell you I certainly don't believe that I ... thought the fella was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s. So that was not the case. But as to pranks that were played back then, I don't remember them all but again, high school days - if I did stupid things I'm afraid I gotta say sorry for it." 

That's it?  And here I thought I could not dislike this guy anymore after reading the Washington Post article.

It was not a "prank" you fucktard! It was physical abuse, and it doesn't mean a damn thing if you did, or did not, think the boy was gay. You still abused and humiliated him!

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go give more money to President Obama's reelection campaign.

Update 2: More from Mitt's friends concerning the haircut incident.

And another classmate, Phillip Maxwell, who witnessed the hair-cutting incident, told CBS today: “Mitt was a prankster, there’s no doubt about it. This thing with Lauber wasn’t a prank. This was, well, as a lawyer, it was an assault. It was an assault and a battery. And I’m sure that John Lauber carried it with him for the rest of his life.” 

I th8ink Romney is in serious trouble here.