There's plenty of rich character detail in Jason Horowitz's profile of Mitt Romney, prep schooler. The part that Romney has to deal with now is up at the top.* In 1965, an effeminate student named John Lauber showed up with "bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye."
“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.
Romney was a high school senior; he turned 18 in the spring when this happened. Horowitz has the story cold, and Romney isn't even trying to deny it. Phil Rucker, the Post's Romney beat reporter, has tweeted out the governor's measured response.
"Back in high school, I did some dumb things & if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize. I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far and for that, I apologize. I certainly don't believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s."
7 comments:
F-35 news from across the pond....
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/10/f35_u_turn_idiocy/
The like of that wants to be President?
Apparently as many Americans think Romney is fit for the job as those who back Obama.
When a bully calls you gay, I don't think they care if you actually are.
He "didn't believe that he thought the fellow was homosexual".
Shouldn't he have known what he thought, or is he so deep off the religious deep end that he can no longer know anything - just believe.
Being a bully in high school is a significant refection on the character of such. Romney can call this just a 'prank' but it was a physical assault (and cutting someones hair as they lay screaming on the round is just a few shades below a rape).
I was bullied in high school and know that that this is a very good indication of the character of of a person for the rest of their life. Just as kids that torture animals grow up to be serial killers, high school bullies grow up to be obnoxious politicians.
Anon, I intervened to stop bullying few times while I was at high school but just a few and, for that, I'm ashamed. More often than not I would look the other way and pretend not to see. There were plenty, however, who actually giggled, nervously pretending they found it funny while it was plain they didn't.
Yet, when I did stand up for someone else, I never had to actually fight the bully. Once someone perhaps more physically capable stands up the dynamic changes and the tormenter wants no part of it.
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