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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: a fool in paradise

They should have seen what the Army did to my hair in 1969.


61 posted on 05/10/2012 12:46:46 PM PDT by Dusty Road
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To: Shimmer1

And ate dog...


62 posted on 05/10/2012 12:47:51 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter knows whom he's working for)
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To: Jim from C-Town; beandog

i feel like I am forced to vote for him in Nov but he seems to be a rival a-h to Obama.

And I don’t think bullying is good for kids or necessary.


63 posted on 05/10/2012 12:49:11 PM PDT by Yaelle
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To: presidio9
.. it's even more horrible. Presidential candidate George Romney visited Viet Nam in 1968. Not widely known is that Mitt Romney (probably 20 or 21 at the time) went with him.

The senior Romney asked "special favors" for his son and for himself. They wanted to be "special rangers" was the term the elder Romney used. The military first checked with Washington and was ordered to assist the Romneys.

Here's how one who served in Viet Nam described to a Senate subcommittee what the Romneys did to Vietnamese villagers.

Both father and son have

"raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam . . . ."

My emphasis. They first tied the dogs to the tops of military vehicles, others said.

64 posted on 05/10/2012 12:51:22 PM PDT by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: Williams
Just heard the media admits they “held” this story till now.

When the news broke of GW Bush's DWI arrest on the eve of the election, it clearly cost him some votes.

Al Gore Junior brags that he got the popular vote in 2000. He got 0.51% more votes, a half a percent.

Bush would've taken the popular vote as well if the story had aired in time for the public to accept the news and factor in decades of subsequent behavior.

65 posted on 05/10/2012 12:53:51 PM PDT by a fool in paradise (Barack Obama has cut and run from what he called "the right war".)
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To: presidio9
This is the writer, Cliff Weathers...

No wonder he whines so much, what a douche.

66 posted on 05/10/2012 12:55:17 PM PDT by smoothsailing
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To: FlipWilson

Obama like eating wieners and I don’t mean the dogs. Although I’m sure that would be true too.


67 posted on 05/10/2012 12:55:22 PM PDT by Jack Burton007 (This is Jack Burton in the Pork Chop Express, and I'm talkin' to whoever's listenin' out there.)
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To: presidio9

These leftist attacks make Romney more appealing to the conservatives. Bad move on their part.

Homosexuals are 2% of the population and maybe 25% of the population are homosexual sympathizers. Does not make sense to attack the other 73% who are predisposed to align themselves with a “straight” guy.


68 posted on 05/10/2012 12:56:40 PM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
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To: Ironfocus

They also insist that there isn’t a culture war against Christians.

Stalinists lie. Always.


69 posted on 05/10/2012 12:57:27 PM PDT by a fool in paradise (Barack Obama has cut and run from what he called "the right war".)
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To: Presbyterian Reporter
These leftist attacks make Romney more appealing to the conservatives. Bad move on their part.

Exactly....what hurts Romney is when people like Jimmy Carter say that they would be comfortable with a Romney Presidency....they are making a big mistake by taking this route.

70 posted on 05/10/2012 12:59:01 PM PDT by dfwgator (Don't wake up in a roadside ditch. Get rid of Romney.)
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To: albie
He’s so busy beatin up fags and cuttin their hair

Just after I got into the military, an E-6 trapped an E-4 with a hippie hair style and cut it at annual training. Charged him $.25 to be withing regulations.

71 posted on 05/10/2012 1:02:50 PM PDT by Arrowhead1952 (It's time to take out the trash in DC.)
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To: dennisw

I see the silliness of trying to use this as an election “gotcha”, although this kind of Greg Marmalard-type incident fits right in with Romney’s character, so I don’t defend it.

You cleared up something for me, though. Bullying was commonplace when I was a kid, but not one kid ever killed themselves because of it. It must be because they’re so coddled and indulged now that they just can’t handle it.


72 posted on 05/10/2012 1:03:21 PM PDT by CatherineofAragon (Time for a write-in campaign...Darryl Dixon for President)
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To: smoothsailing

He looks like a Sleestack.


73 posted on 05/10/2012 1:05:23 PM PDT by CatherineofAragon (Time for a write-in campaign...Darryl Dixon for President)
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To: presidio9

I was bullied horribly in camp and in school. I got over it. To call what Mittens did to this kid “vicious”, “violent” or “assault” is just silly and stupid.


74 posted on 05/10/2012 1:05:45 PM PDT by montag813
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To: CatherineofAragon

Does WaPo Know Obama Shoved a Little Girl?
Breitbart.com ^ | 5/10/12 | John Nolte
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2882239/posts
Posted on Thursday, May 10, 2012 1:57:54 PM by ColdOne

If we’re going to delve deep into a candidate’s past, let’s delve deep into a candidate’s past.

Here’s Obama in his own words admitting to physically shoving a little girl named Coretta.

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


75 posted on 05/10/2012 1:06:15 PM PDT by a fool in paradise (Barack Obama has cut and run from what he called "the right war".)
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To: a fool in paradise

I’m sorry, are you posting this to me for a reason?


76 posted on 05/10/2012 1:08:21 PM PDT by CatherineofAragon (Time for a write-in campaign...Darryl Dixon for President)
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To: presidio9

“All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.”

BWAHAHAHAHA

I love articles like this though. It shows how desperate Obama is getting.


77 posted on 05/10/2012 1:08:36 PM PDT by Dragonspirit (Always remember President Token won only by defecting on his CFR pledge.)
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To: dennisw
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

The ONLY reason we are hearing about this at ALL is because Lauber is DEAD. Were he alive they couldn't slander him by saying he was a homosexual.

78 posted on 05/10/2012 1:09:36 PM PDT by montag813
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To: WilliamofCarmichael
Next we're gonna hear about how Romney and Moroni nuked that most cosmopolitan of cities: Sodom itself!
79 posted on 05/10/2012 1:12:17 PM PDT by Theophilus (Not merely prolife, but prolific)
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To: presidio9

The vice-principal in my highschool 1972 routinely shanghied long-haired students and took them to the barber himself...with no permission from parents. It was a public school - no particular dress code. He just wasn’t gonna have his students look like “bums, hippies, or queers”.
Didn’t bother us at all. The vice-principal was wildly popular with students and parents alike. Firm but fair -in those days.


80 posted on 05/10/2012 1:12:34 PM PDT by bossmechanic (If all else fails, hit it with a hammer)
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