Tags
Bullying, Election, Gay Rights, Gay-Bashing, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Mitt Romney, Politics, Presidential Candidate
Picture Courtesy of The New Civil Rights Movement
Until today, I haven’t thought of Mitt Romney as a cruel person.
Insensitive? Perhaps. Completely out of touch with the vast majority of working Americans? Definitely. Willing to serve the interests of malicious parties if that’s what it takes to get elected? Absolutely. I’ve thought all these things about the presumptive Republican candidate. But I have never really thought of the man as overtly cruel.
Until today.
Today, I have a new perspective on Mitt Romney, and it is not a flattering one. Perhaps you might think it was a recent story in the Washington Post that led me to rethink the issue of his character? According to the Post, Romney led a bullying incident in his youth. Apparently, Mitt Romney found the young man’s hair unacceptable. So, he took it upon himself to rally a number of classmates, tracked down the younger student, tackled him, and cut his hair while the young boy screamed for help.
That’s pretty cruel, isn’t it? You might think it was this story that has me rethinking the character of the presumptive Republican candidate.
Well not quite. See, I’m not in the habit of holding what middle-aged people did back in high school against them. Short of a dead body or a crashed car at least, I am generally willing to give folks the benefit of the doubt for their youthful conduct. …Hell, I can even forgive a crashed car. There is just too much ground between this incident and today’s politics to make this story a clear case against voting for Mitt Romney. I would normally have been willing to believe that Romney was no longer the sort of person to attack and humiliate an individual just because that person was gay, …or that he had weird hair.
Until, that is, the Romney camp opened their mouths and weighed in on the issue. In an interview with Fox News, Romney has said he doesn’t remember the incident. He and his wife have also taken to playing up the story that Romney was a bit of a prankster in his youth, all part of an obvious attempt to minimize the issue. Romney tells us he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but if he has he is certainly sorry.
Great!
Mitt is hypothetically sorry for anyone he might have inadvertently hurt, but he assured us he didn’t mean to.
Which is utterly pathetic.
This response isn’t simply minimizing the damage to Romney’s campaign, it is minimizing the damage done by such incidents. I understand Romney’s desire to do the one, but the other is completely unacceptable. Hell, there are genuine questions about the accuracy of the Post article. Romney could reasonably quibble with a number of the specifics. I’m not entirely sold on some of the details in the Post article (the exact role of sexual orientation in this incident is certainly questionable). Instead, he seems to suggest that this sort of thing just doesn’t matter.
In this response, Mitt Romney has shown us the heartless little bastard who once attacked and humiliated a classmate over his hair is still with us. Is that too strong? Well then, he has certainly shown that such incidents don’t warrant a place in his memory, and that they count as little more than practical jokes in his book. But (you may ask) what if he really doesn’t remember? Well then I should think a little more surprise might be in order. He could at least acknowledge the gravity of the charge.
In likening this event to a harmless prank, Mitt Romney has shown us what such a thing would mean to him now, and that is not much. He hasn’t been accused of an overly raucous joke; he has been accused of an action clearly intended to leave a lasting, miserable, impression. He has lots of room to maneuver on this, at least he had, but what he came up with was as dismissive a response as any bully has ever given to the suffering of his victims.
Mitt Romney will be the spokesman for homophobia in the coming election, among other things to be sure, but that will clearly be part of his job. It is expected of Republican Presidential Candidates. Until today I had no idea just how well qualified Mitt Romney will be for this aspect of his coming task.
What Romney is accused of doing may have happened long ago, but we should all be able to address the question of whether or not it is acceptable in a straight-forward manner. As the accused party in this instance, Romney has a responsibility to own up to what he did, defend his actions, or apologize for them in clear terms. Whether or not you personally care about such things, well that is a decision we will all have to make for ourselves.
Mitt clearly doesn’t.
northierthanthou 
The others involved in the “prank” feel bad to this day about what they did and it remains vivid in their memories. As the Post article points out, when one of the pranksters encountered the victim of the attack years later when they were adults, the victim spoke of how bad he felt to that day. I am quite certain that Romney remembers the incident clearly but he has shown himself to be so lacking in humility or sympathy that he won’t own up to it. I went to a prep school and witnessed some cruel behavior, almost always directed at anyone even a little different. That Mitt was a senior when he did it makes it even worse because seniors are supposed to live to a higher standard and prevent such stuff. Mitt was the leader of the little mob. It also says something about the kid whose hair was cut that he didn’t turn those kids in. Al Capp, who went to Exeter, and as a Jew and a cripple was subjected to merciless abuse, said the only difference between a street gang and kids at a prep school is that the street gang has guts.
Yeah, if Romney doesn’t remember the incident, so much the worse. How lacking in empathy do you have to be to just move on after something like that, and not even remember it.
There is also something very disingenuous about his whole, we-didn’t-talk-about-that-sort-of-thing-back-then argument. It reminds me a lot of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claiming there were no gays in Iran. Gay rights may not have been an issue for public discussion back then, but gay-bashing certainly did happen. And if Romney wants to tell us he didn’t participate in the bashing, then he ought not to be raiding the red herring of a more general discussion about the topic. That gays were in the closet simply does not mean he didn’t actively humiliate those he may have suspected of belonging there.
Yeah, I’m forgiving for youthful indiscretions too, but he campaigns in the fashion of a bully. Throwing tons of negative money at his opponents. Good post!
Thank you Tom and Lavern,
One of the advantages of not having television is that I can skip a lot of the attack ads. I have nothing against negativity, per se. It’s a question of whether or not the criticism is sound, to me anyway. Sometimes there is just no substitute for getting into the details.
My take of the whole thing is the same as yours. Not so much what was done 40 years ago. It was a mean spirited thing and bullyish. Those tend to be characteristics of some people’s personalities. Thanks for saying so clearly what I wanted to say.
It does sound like this went well beyond the pale, and I’ve seen a lot of questions about the article’s sources. A couple were outright botched, but at least 2 witnesses seem to be quite intact. At the end of the day, this remains a big old red flag, and for me the deciding factor was Romney’s lackluster response.
I really didn’t need more reasons to dislike and mistrust this man, as his campaign has been riddled with the worst kind of ass kissing and mud slinging. By feigning ignorance of the event, and by alluding to the “hypothetical event” as a joke, he really has shown us his shallow, cruel, and insensitive soul. It’s sickening.
Well teh campaigns are just going to get worse. I actually did like this guy. I did anyway.
I think you’ve stated this very well. I agree. And thank you.
Thanks for your comment on my blog. I’m intrigued by yours and look forward to reading more!
It was an interesting discussion. I expect we’ll have more. 🙂
“he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but if he has he is certainly sorry.”
There is a big difference between saying I’m truly sorry for what I did and saying I’m sorry if (my actions) I hurt you.
You are quite right.
My issue with Romney isn’t that he was a jerky kid 40 years ago, it’s his inability (or just plain unwillingness) to own it. I am looking for accountability. I want accountability in Washington, I want accountability on Wall Street, and I want a president who is accountable as well. If the prank was so harmless, as people are now trying to claim, why wouldn’t Romney simply own it? I wouldn’t want to be judged on my actions as a child, but I hope I would have enough integrity to accept responsibility for the pain I caused others when confronted with it.
Honestly, I think he missed a real opportunity here. If he’d said he remembered the incident and he understood the problem and deeply regretted his actions, i for one would have been impressed. As it stands…