"Look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey."
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.
According to Obama's "autobiography" (ghost written by William Ayers), over 10 years after Romney allegedly picked on another student, Obama bullied a little girl and sucker-punched a 7th grade boy and made him cry.
Sometimes the so-called fag-haters get it wrong and they hate to be proven wrong. They’re probably also fag pet-haters but then they get that wrong too. LMAO!
Not a Romney fan at all but this is all the media can hork up on him? Seriously? If they’d put half of this effort in to Obama’s transcripts or birth certificate we wouldn’t have waffles in the White House! This is going to be an excruciatingly long summer and fall.
You did this to girls as a senior in High School? How long ago was this?
I’m old enough to remember what the typical young straight male’s attitude toward homosexuality was in 1965. Repugnance mounting to loathing would not be too strong a term for it. This was the mainstream point of view. The act itself was illegal everywhere in the USA. Was 17-year-old Mormon Mitt Romney supposed to jump in his time machine, dial up 2012 AD, learn the new standard of tolerance, and return to 1965 to spread the word among his benighted brethren?
Gimme a break.
“He seems to be quite an insensitive person, with a very healthy ego. This would not be my psychological profile for a good president.”
Good points. And those observations are no doubt based on more recent comments and actions. But reinforced with this act as a senior in High School.
OTOH, if we had any recollections from anybody on obama’s youth we would probably see similar things.
We are soooo screwed. But we will live to fight again.
Obama’s strategy is to stir up a gay marriage fight so he doesn’t have to talk about the economy.
“He seems to be quite an insensitive person, with a very healthy ego. This would not be my psychological profile for a good president.”
Obama appears to be of much higher character. If you’re a moron.
nodding. That too
"Look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey."
I hit Jeff Smith in the nose,
It was 1963
I was 12
Im sorry
Cliffy, I frolic happily in a pool of your bitter tears.
Mean ol bully republikans. /s
If so, the strategy will backfire. 0bama will energize social conservatives, who will turn out in large numbers at the polls. I hope 0bama clings to such a foolish strategy.
Why can’t someone find us some of Barry’s high school or college buddies who can tell us all how he wuz savin’ the whales......
Why don’t any of 0bama’s classmates remember him? 0bviously composite girlfriends can’t come forward but there must have been some actual people around him in his life.
Nah, just get some popcorn and watch these socialist rip each other apart. Cat fight!
Being bullied is part of life's initiation. If you are never bullied you are unlikely to build a character. The anti-bullies are among the greatest bullies of all time.
‘Ata Girl’ is not bullying somebody!
And the GOP establishment, along with ridiculous numbers of average GOP voters, have fomented this severely flawed candidate upon us, a candidate whom we are supposed to vote for in the general.
I hope, once all the votes are counted, that the national GOP and its foolish, "go along to get along" Republican primary voters, are proud of themselves.
We are faced with an incredibly weak Democratic incumbent, and Romney (who in addition to everything else is a Mormon cultist) is the best the GOP could nominate to oppose him? The GOP deserves to lose, as do the idiotic primary voters who helped nominate Romney.
This is an absolute debacle for the party of Lincoln, and my only solace is the fact the Sarah Palin will be elected President in 2016 as a result of this asinine choice the GOP has made in 2012. And we can't just blame the GOP elite: it is the GOP primary voters throughout the country who have virtually ensured this outcome.
At least if (when?) 0bama wins, we will only have *8* years of straight socialism, as opposed to the *12* years of it which is guaranteed if Romney were to somehow win. Think about it: either 0bama for 8 years followed by someone like Palin, or 0bama (4 years) and either Romney for 8, or Romney (4 years) plus a Democrat for at least another 4.
Realistically speaking, 0bama's reelection actually insures only *8* years of socialism, as opposed to *12* guaranteed as the result of a Romney election in 2012.
Is there anyone on this forum who thinks that Romney is not a socialist? (see Romneycare and it's ugly stepchild 0bamacare, just for starters)
0bamacare is not a debatable issue in this election cycle. Does anyone grasp the import of this? 0bamacare (the one issue which could guarantee 0bama's defeat) is not a debatable issue in this election cycle.
We are so far beyond f----d, that it takes the light from f----d a million years to reach us...
If more people had stood up to the countercultural freaks in 1965 we wouldn’t be in so much trouble now.
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