(Romney said the incident involving cutting the hair of John Lauber, whom some students suspected was gay, occurred "a long time ago." "I don't remember that incident," Romney said, laughing. "I certainly don't believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case.") (.)
I have the benefit of having been in High School at the same time as Mitt
Romney was. We certainly were aware that there were gay people in the world. I
also have clear memories of people being harassed for being (1) short (2) poor
(3) weak (4) effeminate (5) not as much of a jock as their tormentor (6) smart
(7) not stylishly dressed (8) not expensively enough dressed (9) not playing
team sports (10) not being popular with the girls (11) socially awkward, and
that is just the start of the list that could be drawn up from the memories of
others...What I also clearly recall is that Type A students tended to get away with harassing Type B, C, D and F students. It was sort of not seen as actionable.
I never attended school with a Type AAA student, whose father was currently the Governor of that State. One presumes that such a Young Prince could do very little wrong, given his powerful social and political connections.
However, if a group of low status students ganged up on a Type A student, ran him down, held him to the floor while he screamed and roughly hacked off his hair, they would have been immediately expelled. I find it interesting, since the rough haircut that Mitt Romney gave his fellow student must have been immediately visible to the school staff (unless they all were dangerously near-sighted or blind) that Romney and his "posse" were given a free pass. None of the other perps recall being disciplined, Romney claims (dubiously) that, gosh! he can't even recall such an incident, shucks, sorry, my bad, if I upset anyone by doing something sooooo long ago, when I was so young and so prone to "pranks".
In other circumstances, that incident would have been considered an assault. One hears stories about the horrors of life in English Boarding Schools, where fairly dreadful things happened to lower classmen. I accept that stuff happens, but it is also a fairly horrible story, that everyone involved says they have never forgotten… except for Romney. I can only assume that Romney has early stage Alzheimer's, he somehow never got issued an actual soul or conscience, or that he is a glib pathological liar. I vote for the last option.
I wasn't going to vote for him anyhow, but I hope that this issue gets legs and helps the rest of the nation come to realize what a disaster electing this guy would be. Oddly enough, it often isn't the big things that take down criminals, it is the small things. This feels like one of those small, but telling things. My guess is that about 80% of former students can recall being the target of serial harassment. I think they can clearly recall how it made them feel and what they thought of those who casually set out to shove their faces into (1) the dirt (2) a random pile of dogshit (3) or whatever. It is very much a fight for dominance, between an individual or individuals who thought they should be at the top of the heap, and everyone else. Very primal stuff, one suspects.
In Romney's defense, several pundits noted that in two previous runs for President, "None of his Republican opponents mentioned the issue", as though that means that Romney had been fully vetted and found acceptable to the Republican leadership, so we should just shut up and stop talking about what a jerk this story appears to suggest that he is. But it just doesn't work that way. My wife and I had an interesting talk about this. Try it with your wife or a friend and it is amazing what memories are dredged up. I was fairly lucky and was able to avoid the worst abuse, but I saw others who were not so lucky… and I don't recall me standing up for them, I think in part to avoid having attention drawn to me. I wonder how many others had much the same experiences. I suspect a majority of the American people probably do. I like hearing that the issue of bullying has been given a great deal more attention these days. I am not sure what effect that will have on society, and on individuals, but I think it sounds like a very, very good idea.
On the other hand, I think Mitt Romney sounds like an asshole.
3 comments:
You've got me thinking Arthur, and trying to remember. I was pretty naive about such worldly things as homosexuality back then. I knew there were "girly" guys around, some of them were my friends, but I never really cared what sort of sexual orientation they were. didn't make any difference. As far as I remember, the harrassment words like "fag" and "queer" weren't big insulting labels like they became later. Back then you could get beat up for the good ol' American reasons like having ears that were too big. I agree with you evaluation of Romney. He is an asshole, and I doubt he even knows it.
The more I think about this story, the more I come to wonder about the phenomena of Romney apparently being immune from punishment at his school.
Does that sound unfair to you? Okay, so let's try a bit of role reversal. Let's say that an average student became upset by the ultra-preppy haircut that the Governor's son wore... so he got four of his friends, tracked down the Governor's son, tackled him and held him down by force while he struggled and cried out for help. With me so far? And then the ringleader got out his scissors and hacked away at the Governor's son's immaculate haircut until it looked like he had mange.
Then what? What would the school have done to those five boys, and particularly to the instigator, the "ring-leader" of the wolf pack? I think he would have been tossed out of the school on his ear and never allowed to return.
So tell me, why is one child seen as exempt from punishment, while another would be in big, big trouble? Could it be that the social and political connections of the lucky one have shielded him from the consequences of his actions throughout his entire life? I would argue that they have, that Romney believes that he, his family and his friends are just different. And better. Have you ever wondered why he looks so ill at ease talking with the public (i.e. the peasants)?
I think that is why. He can hire them, he can fire them, he can buy up and strip their companies to the bone, but he really has nothing to say to them, since they aren't even on his radar. They just don't count, as far as he is concerned.
You get the story right, and it is a story of privilege and the blindness of privilege.
The biggest problem with Romney, in my view, is what seems to be the fact that - although good at running a capital investment firm - he appears to be totally feckless in the fracas of politics.
Those elected with him: the clueless Tea Party hacks, will run the country, and Romney will be unimportant.
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