Mitt Romney, Childhood Bully
Turns out Mitt Romney was always unlikeable:
John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann…
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.
[For] one venerable English teacher, Carl G. Wonnberger, nicknamed “the Bat” for his diminished eyesight… Romney accompanied Wonnberger and Pierce Getsinger, another student, from the second floor of the main academic building to the library to retrieve a book the two boys needed. According to Getsinger, Romney opened a first set of doors for Wonnberger, but then at the next set, with other students around, he swept his hand forward, bidding the teacher into a closed door. Wonnberger walked right into it and Getsinger said Romney giggled hysterically as the teacher shrugged it off as another of life’s indignities.
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I don’t like Romney and I’m even less a fan of bullying, but I hope I won’t be held accountable when I’m in my 50s for making bad choices when I was in high school and not always having the self-confidence I wish I’d had to stand up to peer pressure and not be a dick. People do make bad choices and I’d like to think they can apologize and move onto being a better person (at a minimum I hope it is true for me).
I would also hope we have better reasons to elect or not elect someone than “he was an asshole when he was 18.”
Posted by kate on May 11th, 2012 at 10:44 amIf this were an isolated incident, I’d be happy to disregard it as a “youthful indiscretion”, but I think this fits into a larger pattern of a lack of empathy on Romney’s part that I find troubling as a leader. In everything from strapping a dog to a roof to his “vulture capitalism” business of making money via laying people off, I think Mitt has a poor ability to take someone else’s perspective and consider the results of his actions. I don’t want someone like that in the White House.
The fact that he claims that he doesn’t even remember these incidents is, frankly, even more troubling.
Posted by Jeff on May 11th, 2012 at 10:54 am