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Mitt Romney bullying story holds up to scrutiny (WaPo: Unverified quotes, 2nd-hand "sources" are ok)
Washington Post (Omblog) ^ | 5/11/2012 | Patrick B. Pexton

Posted on 05/11/2012 8:38:01 PM PDT by Qbert

The ombudsman is being bombarded by input from readers, via e-mail and phone calls, about the story that Post reporter Jason Horowitz wrote on Mitt Romney’s teenage years at the prestigious Cranbrook School in Michigan.

The story leads with an anecdote about Romney and some of his friends in his dormitory tackling and pinning to the ground an unpopular classmate and forcibly cutting off his bleached-blond, longish hair. The boy, John Lauber, was frightened and in tears, Horowitz explained, and the boy turned out to be gay.

The rest of the deeply reported story provides extensive context to Romney’s years there, what the school was like, where Romney fit in the boys’ hierarchy, and the fact that a lot of people liked the son of Michigan’s then-governor, George Romney.

Conservative Web sites have criticized the piece on several grounds.

The first is that The Post changed the text of one paragraph from the online version published on Thursday to the print version published on Friday without telling readers. It’s a description of how one of Romney’s high school friends, Stu White, felt after hearing about the hair-cutting prank. White was not present at the prank.

[Snip]

The Post changed the story after talking to White again and discovering that White only learned of the prank in recent weeks after being told of it by a Cranbrook classmate.

[Snip]

This part of Horowitz’s story is tangential at best. It is only about how one person, who was not an eyewitness, felt about the incident.

[Snip]

“Our intention with this story and future stories about both Mitt Romney and President Obama is to give people the fullest possible portrait of the men who are running for president. We will continue to explore their biographies, their decision-making, and their full lives.”

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: romney; romney2012; wapo; washingtonpost
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To: ansel12; funfan
Mister, if you don’t think that a group taking down someone they don’t like, and doing it violently enough to succeed in cutting off their hair isn’t violent, then try to to imagine yourself convincing a courtroom that it was really just meaningless pranking to all involved, and the victim and the jury should think of it as like a prank call to a funeral home.

You obviously have an agenda, and that is to make sure no one votes for Romney. To believe this BS story after the family has denied it happened and with NO eyewitnesses what so ever says volumes about your intelligence. The incident didn't happen. Romney apologized because that is what RINOs and liberals do. He doesn't remember it because it didn't happen.

41 posted on 05/12/2012 5:16:51 AM PDT by calex59
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To: Qbert
“Our intention with this story and future stories about both Mitt Romney and President Obama is to give people the fullest possible portrait of the men who are running for president. We will continue to explore their biographies, their decision-making, and their full lives.”

Neither the Wash Post nor any other main stream media have done this with Obama. They have only reprinted the hagiography distributed by the Obama campaign and gone no farther.

Person X a few weeks ago heard about incident Y that supposedly happened over 45 years ago and supposedly involved Romney and that's huge news. But they ignore a participating eyewitness, so to speak (even though the witness has spoken about it in a very public forum), of Barry's relatively recent starring role in Tool Time in the Limo and cocaine use (this enthusiastic predilection for cocaine, as well as pot, alcohol, and other drugs definitively corroborated in Barry's very own voice in his award winning reading of "his" Dreams from My Father).
42 posted on 05/12/2012 5:36:23 AM PDT by aruanan
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To: ansel12
I know where you're coming from.

Just a couple of weeks ago I went to get a haircut.

I was so traumatized by it I shot the barber, but I didn't stop there.

I also killed the barbers entire family, including the dog, which I ate.

Obama 2012!

43 posted on 05/12/2012 5:49:11 AM PDT by IMR 4350
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To: Qbert

“Our intention with this story and future stories about both Mitt Romney and President Obama is to give people the fullest possible portrait of the men who are running for president. We will continue to explore their biographies, their decision-making, and their full lives.”


Wow. They don’t even blink when they lie.


44 posted on 05/12/2012 6:00:29 AM PDT by Peet (Everything has an end -- only the sausage has two.)
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To: Qbert

I guess WaPo hasn’t heard the family has stated the story is factually incorrect.


45 posted on 05/12/2012 6:11:10 AM PDT by liberalh8ter (If Barack has a memory like a steel trap, why can't he remember what the Constitution says?)
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To: Peet
Here's the WaPo portraits, Trayvon style:


46 posted on 05/12/2012 6:23:47 AM PDT by Reeses
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To: IMR 4350

If you are the kind of guy that your enemies can take you down and cut off your hair by force, and you convince yourself that it just a haircut that you might not have chosen on your own, then you must have the kind of life stories that would excite submissive masochists the world over.


47 posted on 05/12/2012 7:31:51 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Not voting Romney?? Then double up on down ticket races and your participation this election.)
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To: gusopol3

LOL, non-violent? As you try (and are succeeding) to tell us that being dominated and having your hair cut off by your enemies wouldn’t take violence to accomplish, you prove it by meekly asking if they mean to use a razor for the bald look, or scissors for the hacked off Frankenstein look. You have convinced me of your type.

If you think that it would be easy and non violent for me to shave your head against your will, because I didn’t like you, then I will accept your self description.


48 posted on 05/12/2012 7:42:35 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Not voting Romney?? Then double up on down ticket races and your participation this election.)
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To: ansel12
Go take some Ex-lax.

It'll cure that phony outrage right up.

49 posted on 05/12/2012 7:49:47 AM PDT by IMR 4350
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To: ansel12

Excuse me ? Where did I say “non-violent?” I simply asked where it was stated his head was shaved. Please show that to me since you’ve now claimed it at least twice, and I hadn’t run into it anywhere else.


50 posted on 05/12/2012 7:52:49 AM PDT by gusopol3
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To: calex59

It would sure help if Romney hadn’t already apologized for it, and made it clear that he definitely is not the type of person that could scoff at what should have been a totally bizarre accusation of being a bully that would even go to these violent lengths.

Romney could not make that denial, Romney evidently has quite a past when it comes to his God like sense of entitlement and assertion of himself over lessor beings, it is almost like a son of privilege who knows that he will become a God in time, which just happens to be the reality of this situation.

Now he has you serving him from afar.


51 posted on 05/12/2012 7:55:16 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Not voting Romney?? Then double up on down ticket races and your participation this election.)
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To: Qbert

Patrick Pexton is an aging queen who is not aging very well. Too many pills. Too many drinks. Too many drama scenes. Too many anonymous men.


52 posted on 05/12/2012 7:56:10 AM PDT by WashingtonSource
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To: gusopol3

Sorry, I just woke up and didn’t noticed that post 25 wasn’t to you, that you were only responding to it.

Post 25 also did not claim that the victims head was shaved, I have never claimed his head was shaved.

Either way, if it had, that is what you would have wanted to get into, shaved or hacked at with scissors?


53 posted on 05/12/2012 8:10:49 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Not voting Romney?? Then double up on down ticket races and your participation this election.)
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To: IMR 4350

Phony would be comparing an attack like this to merely receiving your scheduled haircut from your barber, a ‘free’ haircut.


54 posted on 05/12/2012 8:15:18 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Not voting Romney?? Then double up on down ticket races and your participation this election.)
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To: ansel12
You forgot to put the word “vicious” in front of the word “attack”.

You're slipping with the phony outrage creative writing..

Let's try the phony outrage again, and this time I won't settle for anything less than 3 adjectives to describe the attack.

Less than 3 and you get an “F” in phony outrage creative writing.

Now get to it.

55 posted on 05/12/2012 8:51:35 AM PDT by IMR 4350
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To: ansel12

Yeah, I’d much rather the haircut than the shave, but that’s just me. I’m only guessing, but I suspect the hazing at the Cranbrook School in 1965 included some events that were a lot more objectionable than this and that’s why Romney’s good friend Stu White had either never heard of it at the time or had forgotten it in the interim.


56 posted on 05/12/2012 9:17:29 AM PDT by gusopol3
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To: IMR 4350

I can’t imagine what your life of physical submission and passivity, and accommodation, must have been like.


57 posted on 05/12/2012 9:20:14 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Not voting Romney?? Then double up on down ticket races and your participation this election.)
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To: gusopol3

Whatever “hazing” took place could not have equaled this violent act, Mitt was 18, effeminate, soon to be avoiding the draft, but by golly give him enough backup and he could take on the nerd guy, too bad there wasn’t a white hat wearing conservative present that could have put him in his place.

Removing someone’s hair is a very big deal.


58 posted on 05/12/2012 9:40:53 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Not voting Romney?? Then double up on down ticket races and your participation this election.)
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To: ansel12
I can't imagine what your life must be like dwelling on something completely insignificant that happened in your childhood.

You're so unhinged you're fretting over something that never even happened, not to you, but to somebody else.

Some people grow up faster than others, some people never grow up.

You obviously are the latter. Living your life around your childhood “traumas”.

59 posted on 05/12/2012 10:00:11 AM PDT by IMR 4350
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To: IMR 4350

You lost track that there is a presidential primary taking place in the GOP, and what the subject of this thread is, as you make a pathetic attempt to project your childhood or Mitt’s high school years onto someone else it was lame.

This is about examining the candidates character, Romney’s is evidently kind of sick, it may explain his devotion to abortion and the homosexual agenda, and anti-conservatism all of his life.

My relationship to bullies is that I have always been the conservative Texan that could fix them when they attempt to feed on the weak, this insight into Romney is very destructive, it does fit what we know of his life though.

I have never seen a sleazier, more disassociated from normal life candidate in GOP presidential ranks.


60 posted on 05/12/2012 10:18:07 AM PDT by ansel12 ( Not voting Romney?? Then double up on down ticket races and your participation this election.)
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