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Romney’s denials about homophobic assault are despicable
NY ALTNEWS ^ | 05/10/2012 | Cliff Weathers

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2012electionbias; backstabberromney; benedictromney; bishopromney; dnctalkingpoints; gaystapotactics; homosexualagenda; lavendermafia; revisionisthistory; romney; romneytruthfile; romnney2012; samesexmarriage; smearcampaign; yellowjournalism; zogbyism
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To: MrB

Thanks for the laugh.


101 posted on 05/10/2012 2:53:34 PM PDT by pnut22
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To: presidio9

Goode is out to win
http://www.martinsvillebulletin.com/article.cfm?ID=32968

Virgil Goode
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9fBeSA89PA

Candidate review: Virgil Goode on the issues
http://www.ontheissues.org/Virgil_Goode.htm
http://www.examiner.com/article/candidate-review-virgil-goode-on-the-issues
http://www.goodeforpresident2012.com/the-issues.html


102 posted on 05/10/2012 3:06:02 PM PDT by Mozilla (Constitution Party 2012)
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To: apillar
I've actually come close to defending Mittens a few times today

I don't have any problem defending Mitt Romney when he's right but I'll never vote for him. I'd even defend Obama on the few occasions that he is right, like ticking off the Turkish Muslims by calling for them to admit to the genocide of the Armenian Christians in WWI. The sad thing is that each of these two are right so infrequently that I fear for our nation in the next four years, regardless of who wins, and I seldom have to defend either.

103 posted on 05/10/2012 3:29:18 PM PDT by CommerceComet (Obama vs. Romney - clear evidence that our nation has been judged by God and found wanting.)
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To: Mitt Romney

Oh for God’s sake Romney, here’s what you need to say:

Back in the mid-sixties, there were two kinds of people; hippies...and people who cut hippies hair.


104 posted on 05/10/2012 3:45:40 PM PDT by ROCKLOBSTER (Celebrate Republicans Freed the Slaves Month.)
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To: ROCKLOBSTER

He was ‘Just kicking hippies asses and raising hell.’


105 posted on 05/10/2012 3:47:08 PM PDT by dfwgator (Don't wake up in a roadside ditch. Get rid of Romney.)
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To: presidio9
I'll bet about the only honest words from Romney I've heard were in is denying that he did it because he thouht the guy was gay -- I totally believe it. He didn't cut the guy's hair because he thought the guy was gay -- he cut the guy's hair because the hair offended him, because it was a cool hard-ass thing to do to a hippie kid. That sounds just like Romney, to me. We all knew guys like that in school, didn't we? I know I did.

It's a life illustration of how Romney's intrinsic arrogance assumes a right to control by force because the other guy isn't doing it the way Romney wants.

Witness his governing record in Massachusettes.

106 posted on 05/10/2012 3:48:17 PM PDT by Finny ("Raise hell. Vote smart." -- Ted Nugent * By the way, Ted, voting for Romney is voting stupid.)
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To: presidio9

ABC news just made a “federal case” out of Mittens high school rough housing, Labeling him a “bully”.


107 posted on 05/10/2012 3:51:57 PM PDT by swamprebel (Where liberty dwells, there is my country.)
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To: swamprebel

He was a bully, a violent one.

A guy like him would have been shut down hard in my Texas high school.


108 posted on 05/10/2012 4:08:27 PM PDT by ansel12 ( Obama, Romney,"Eurasia" "Eastasia" "Oceania" I can't keep up with the players anymore.)
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To: dfwgator; Mitt Romney; All
Just kicking hippies asses and raising hell.

Unfortunately, they became our College "professors" and "educators" as well as top level members of every government department or agency, federal, state and local.

Bleepin' communists.

109 posted on 05/10/2012 4:08:27 PM PDT by ROCKLOBSTER (Celebrate Republicans Freed the Slaves Month.)
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To: Truth29
You did this to girls as a senior in High School? How long ago was this?

No, I never did that. I just made up a disgusting story to make a point.

110 posted on 05/10/2012 4:17:03 PM PDT by Sirius Lee (When we cease to be good we'll cease to be great. Be for Goode.)
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To: presidio9

“most electable” bump


111 posted on 05/10/2012 6:26:18 PM PDT by Dajjal ("I'm not concerned about the very poor." -- severely conservative Mitt 'Etch-A-Sketch' Rmoney)
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To: CatherineofAragon
He looks like a Sleestack.

LOL!


112 posted on 05/10/2012 6:49:57 PM PDT by smoothsailing
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To: presidio9
Calling this prank “bullying” just shows how the feminization has changed America.

This wouldn't rank a 1 out of 1 to 10, on the bully scale, 10 being an absolute beat down, requiring hospitalization and arrest.

I've had worse “bullying” by my brothers and friends just by horseplaying around.

When we got hurt and whined about it, we were told to "Stop being such a Pu@@y" and get over it. God help America if we ever get into another WW2.

We are all Frenchmen now....

113 posted on 05/10/2012 6:56:48 PM PDT by RedMonqey (Men who will not suffer to self govern, will suffer under the governance of lesser men.)
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To: RedMonqey

It IS BULLYING. BY Romney who has
assaulted a few people on airplanes, too, recently.


114 posted on 05/10/2012 7:20:20 PM PDT by Diogenesis ("Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. " Pres. Ronald Reagan)
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To: ansel12
He was a bully, a violent one.

Dude. HE WAS A KID.

Seriously, no one cares.

115 posted on 05/10/2012 8:36:59 PM PDT by Lazamataz (To the wall, street occupiers!!!!!)
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To: Lazamataz

The “kid” would have been Army enlistment age.

At his age I was an anti-bully force, to have come on to a scene like that would have required action from me, I would have introduced Romney to a conservative sheepdog type.


116 posted on 05/10/2012 8:48:44 PM PDT by ansel12 ( Obama, Romney,"Eurasia" "Eastasia" "Oceania" I can't keep up with the players anymore.)
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To: All
Image and video hosting by TinyPic
117 posted on 05/11/2012 2:18:28 AM PDT by patriot08 (TEXAS GAL- born and bred and proud of it!)
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To: presidio9

STOP THE PRESS - THE HOMOS ARE UPSET!!!


118 posted on 05/11/2012 2:31:37 AM PDT by Hacksaw (If I had a son, he'd look like George Zimmerman.)
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To: Do Not Make Fun Of His Ears

Oh, believe me, Romney is somewhat preferable to Obama. I’d rather be stabbed once than shot at close range once. There is SOME chance of survival.


119 posted on 05/11/2012 7:02:44 AM PDT by Yaelle
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To: Diogenesis
It IS BULLYING. BY Romney who has assaulted a few people on airplanes, too, recently.

What? Did he ask briskly for an extra bag of nuts?

Care to point to a few articles?
120 posted on 05/11/2012 7:56:02 AM PDT by RedMonqey (Men who will not suffer to self govern, will suffer under the governance of lesser men.)
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