Posted on 05/10/2012 12:10:38 PM PDT by presidio9
There may be a good reason voters can’t get a good bead on Mitt Romney. And it may be because the real Romney has a troubled, sadistic history. High School classmates of Romney recall an incident that’s disturbing to its core. Romney, then a popular senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School in Michigan, disapproved of classmate John Lauber’s long, blond locks, which Romney allegedly took as a clue that Lauber was a homosexual. So Romney assembled a posse of bullies and held the boy down and brutally chopped off his hair.
“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.
Today, Romney’s actions would be considered a hate crime. The assault itself is a felony.
So is Mitt Romney sorry for his actions 47 years ago? Nope, unlike five of his classmates, the Republican presidential candidate has no recollection of assaulting Lauber. His campaign team put out this statement:
… the former Massachusetts governor has no recollection of the incident.
Why would Mitt Romney not remember straddling another boy and savagely cutting off his hair? Because the event meant nothing to Romney. Lauber was beneath his contempt. He wasn’t human to the young Romney.
But won’t voters find it disturbing is that five classmates vividly recall the event, but Romney doesn’t? Uh oh, time for shake the Romney Etch-A-Sketch…. Oh that brutal attack? It appears Mitt does remember assaulting Lauber, but…
I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s.
And he still hasn’t apologized.
Also Romney is trying to claim that rampant homophobia didn’t exist in the 1960s? Perhaps that’s why it was so easy for homosexual men to come out back then. You better try again Mitt, you’re getting caught in yet another deep, disturbing lie.
Romney’s actions may be decades old, but they highlight a current problem among the Republican Party: Bullying is an acceptable form of punishment to quell dissent and non-conformity. From Ray Kelly’s spying on Muslims and brutal treatment of peaceful Occupy Wall Street voters to Rush Limbaugh’s labeling of independent women as “feminazis,” “sluts,” and “prostitutes,” the GOP has bcome vile, mean, and intolerant at its core.
Lauber died in 2004, so it is too late for Mitt Romney to apologize to him, but it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t apologize to the public for his actions. As a bullied child myself, I find Romney’s actions in 1965 to be beyond contempt. The emotional scars I bear from the bullying and assaults I had to endure during my teenage years still haunt me.I remember my attackers gleeful faces as they heckled and assaulted me. I remember the names they called me, I remember feeling the spit on my cheek, I remember the punches they threw, I remember the helplessness I felt. There are millions of people like me, we were the “retards,” the “fags,” the “geeks,” and the “losers.” You see, it doesn’t matter to us whether Lauber was gay or not. It also doesn’t matter that Romney didn’t attack him for being gay. What matters is that Lauber was physically assaulted for being different, for being subhuman, to being on a lower social stratus than a scion of wealth and affluence.
I have never received an apologies from the bullies that made my life hell. Today, one of them even denies the events ever happened. To me, this only heightens my contempt for bullies; when caught, they feel it’s acceptable for them to dismiss the event. It either didn’t occur or didn’t matter. My contempt for bullying has only grown because of this. And now, I have a new-found contempt for Mitt Romney, America’s lead bully. And his denying the significance of such an event is just as despicable as the assault.
This was afunny story! Thanks for sharing.
So, is this the new coordinated attack on Romney? That he is anti-gay, and that 0 is pro-gay?
why doesn’t Obama react when Jill Stanek testifies about a downs syndrome baby left to die?
Is it because the little ones are beneath his contempt?
If they were smart, they would heap faint praise on Mitt.
Jimmy Carter gets it, he said he would be “comfortable” with a Mitt Presidency....statements like that hurt Mitt.
But attacks like this will force conservatives to rally around Mitt.
Yep. It’s all scripted. Biden’s remarks, Obama’s “reversal” of opinion, now this. All scripted. I expect more.
Right now they have been given a mission to prove that Mitt is not gay and that he did not create gay marriage.
Don't know how they'll do that with this sort of stories.
I know the feeling, I've actually come close to defending Mittens a few times today, because this half century old story from his high school days is just so stupid and desperate by team Obama. Heck 50 years ago, Obama was eating Fido in Indonesia while worshiping Allah at the local Mosque. I'll take some American High School Hijink anyday over that.
The difference between now and 50 years ago is that 50 years ago the kids who were bullied were tough enough to take it and maybe strike back. No way was this John Lauber traumatized by having his hair cut by some boys. He may have even adjusted his attitude for the better
Either way that incident was normal male jousting, joshing and hi jinx as in...boys will be boys
Yeah...
And this whole thing wasn’t a CHOREOGRAPHED ATTACK....
The only thing that fell through was that North Carolina didn’t vote the way Obama, Daily Kos, and MSNBC expected them to, so Obama could make a big, prime-time splash with it.
High school? Really?
Well, if Romney’s actions in high school are fair game, then so are Obama’s. May I suggest the mainstream media begin paying at least as much attention to Obama’s past as they do with Romney’s?
And he’ll kick Obama’s little effeminate a** too!
All part of a strategy. Obama comes out for gay marriage, and we now make it that Romney is a homophobic hater.
Isn’t it interesting that all the others who committed this heinous act now support Obama, and they are all great guys because they are “sorry” (and because they support Obama).
Just heard the media admits they “held” this story till now.
I might adapt the position of “Work for a Romney victory 2012, and a Romney defeat in 2016.”
I learned a long time ago the best way to deal with a bully was a smile, and a 2x4.
After losing a couple of teeth, the bullies move on to easier prey.
Or it's genuine psychopathy. It's all there. The Bullying, the selective memory/denial, refusal or inability to admit error, the shadenfreude...the guy is a disaster for the GOP.
He is to the GOP what Obama is to the DNC - a total arrogant jack@$s fluster cluck on a power trip.
America is xcrewed.
I kissed a bunch of them and pulled their hair.
I thought about it and still don’t care.
“the bullying and assaults I had to endure”
As an Army brat I was always the new kid, except at post schools.
Ever try sticking up for yourself Cliff? No?
I think I see the problem. May I push in your stool, looser.
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