I am in Omaha, Nebraska today to speak at the Hilton Omaha where Mitt Romney will be raising cash in a private fundraiser for his campaign. It will be interesting if he is pressed on this story picking up steam this week. Romney has been accused of former school chums from his elite all-boy boarding school of attacking a presumed gay student and cutting off his hair. Since in many states the attack on the now-deceased John Lauber would be a hate crime, it is a serious charge even if it was so many years ago. The witness turns out to be a former prosecutor who says that he has been haunted by the act. This week Romney reaffirmed that he opposed same-sex marriage as a personal matter. Update: Romney has apologized for incidents in his youth.
The Washington Post spoke to five students, including one who said that Romney had it out for a younger boy because of his long bleached-blond hair in 1965. The witness say that Romney led friends in tackling and cutting off Lauber’s hair. The witness is Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor. Romney is quoted at the time as declaring “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!”
The response from the campaign was a bit weak under the circumstances. The campaign simply said that Romney had no recollection of the event: “The stories of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents.”
I have met Romney and even flew across the country on a flight back to Washington. He has struck me as a particularly friendly and decent person despite our disagreement on many issues. However, despite the long passage of time, the leading of an attack on a gay student is a serious matter as it would in a racist or anti-Semitic attack. I would have expected a clear recollection that such an attack could never have occurred.
Four other students recalled the incident, including some who admitted to participating in it. Also troubling are accounts like this one: “In an English class, Gary Hummel, who was a closeted gay student at the time, recalled that his efforts to speak out in class were punctuated with Romney shouting, ‘Atta girl!'”
While Romney may claim that it was not an anti-gay attack but just a prank, one would expect him to have an equally clear memory of the event at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Certainly the memory stuck with Lauber who spoke to some of the witnesses years later. For my part, I am equally troubled by the claim of a lack of any recollection of such events.
Romney however appears to be trying to get ahead of the story and the confirmatory accounts of former friends. On a radio show, he said “Back in high school, I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that. I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far and for that, I apologize.” However, he still denied any recollection of the attack on Lauber: “I don’t remember that incident. 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.”
Do you think this is a viable campaign issue given the passage of time? If he was a bully decades ago, does it have bearing today on the man running for office?
Source: Washington Post
JPMorgan just announced a $2B trading loss. How will Romney and Obama handle this? Similarly, or differently?
Same shit different day?
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0511-jpmorgan-chase-20120511,0,4625412.story
Barely four years after Wall Street’s wrong-way bets plunged the world into a financial crisis, JPMorgan Chase & Co. admitted it lost $2 billion from a trading portfolio that was supposed to have helped the bank manage credit risk.
“These were egregious mistakes,” said Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, who is considered one of the world’s savviest bankers. “We have egg on our face, and we deserve any criticism we get.”
The announcement stunned the financial industry, in part because it came from such a highly regarded bank. Dimon had navigated JPMorgan through the crisis in good shape by clamping down on some of the excessive risks that torpedoed rivals.
Dimon told analysts that the bank racked up $2 billion in trading losses during the last six weeks, and that could “easily get worse.” He said JPMorgan could suffer an additional $1-billion loss from the portfolio during the second quarter.
“My jaw is on the table,” said Nancy Bush of SNL Financial. “I never expected this right now — not in a million years.”
The losses stemmed from derivative bets that backfired in the company’s Chief Investment Office.
Geeba Geeba, From that very day Obama pushed Coretta, he had cooties. Cooties for the rest of his life.
Geeba Geeba; huh, the only thing Romney would do would be to reinstate all the Bush financial policies. Which means more bubbles, more pain for average Americans more austerity leading to more depression. Sure.
No, I know the Independents of this nation do not want to go back. And now with the Occupy movement, mobilizing the progressive vote will be easier. They may not be voting ‘for’ Obama, but they will be voting ‘against’ Romney. No doubt.
rcampbell,
Selective memory on Mitt’s part.
Personally I’d like to hear of more recent aberrant behavior of both candidates. Get me some dirt about Romney during the time period that Obama is blocking information about his grades, papers and all the other stuff his legal team is hiding. But really all this doesn’t really matter anyway. If ya’ll want to go down the tube like Europe then re-elect this guy. But my guess is that your descendants will hate you for it. If you want to give them a chance then elect a person with actual executive experience for the Executive Branch. Romney. At least he will show some leadership and will have street cred when it comes to a tussle with Putin or Mr. (not a chance for a Mrs) China.
And btw, I haven’t read all the commentary but why don’t I see much conversation here about Obama’s bragging (ok that’s my word) about pushing around Coretta in his book? If I had to chose between a rich kid that picks on other rich kids and a guy who finds it in his heart to publish a book that contains his exploits pushing around a girl – I would not chose the abuser of women. HE IS ANTI-WOMAN!
Romney is a SOCIOPATH, not a psychopath. Look it up, “Otteray Scribe”..
The point is that this incident was so “normal” in Mitt’s minds, so uneventful that he cannot distinquiish this from any of the other “pranks” he claims to have been party to. He can’t expected to choose to remember it. Many want to dismiss it because it happened 50 years ago. Seems pretty evident from personal testimony here that victims of such bullying behavior still remember the pain of those incidents quitev well many years later.
The point is that he had a mean streak then, and judging from the ads he ran during the primaries, still has today.
“Blouise, Bush v Clinton? The conspiracy people will go crazy… …short trip.” (SwM)
LOL … that’s just what I was thinking. That would be an election!!
I am loathe to draw too many conclusions from an incident occurring so many years ago, but forgetting about tormenting another male to the point of tears seems awfully callous to me. A haughtiness of mind and spirit is precisely what we don’t nee right now.
I can still remember back at our remote ATSB in South Vietnam where the local SEAL team detachment would gleefully get another sailor drunk and shave off half his hair. They had a German shepherd, too, and delighted in having it kill some of the other sailors’ pet dogs. One of my friends whose pet dog had died in this way got out his weapon and started off to kill the SEALs’ cur, but since the Navy considered the animal official property, we talked our shipmate out of getting busted for giving the SEAL team a little of their own medicine. You want to see psychopaths, you really need to see a Seal or Special Ops team up close and personal. I have no problem at all visualizing twenty-five of these goons murdering an unarmed man in front of his family.
Mitt Romney’s prep-school queer baiting, however distasteful, doesn’t hold a candle to what damage he could do if given command of some real psychopaths. I think President Obama has pretty much got that low road all to himself, much to the delight of his own party and the envious dismay of John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsay Graham.
Fareed Zakaria recently accused Americans of acting like a bunch of “scared, fearful losers,” which reminded me of Gore Vidal saying, decades ago, that “Americans are among the most easily frightened people on earth.” This coming election season promises to vindicate these accurate assessments — who can scare whom the worst over the least, with evil, lesser or greater, the only sure winner in the end. As H. L. Menken said almost a century ago: “I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.”
Poor little rich boy. From debasing a blind teacher, the scissor incident, the terrified dog on the roof. His fleeing to an estate in Paris to avoid the draft, his early adult years struggling to get by selling off a nice pile of daddy-supplied stock here and there to his starter manse purchased by daddy.
All interesting and tangible examples of a spoiled scion enjoying his station with a complete lack of basic empathy or understanding of what most people go through. All make for good press but the biggest example of the way Rmoney sees the rest of us is through his years as a vulture capitalist with Bain. Wealthy already, it takes a special kind of soulless asshole to turn profit off draining company’s assets, ruining employee pensions, laying off a dedicated workforce and then happily scampering off to buy the next company to do it all over again. Rmoney is no businessman. Businessmen are generally in the “business” of trying to run a profitable business, not buying them with someone else’s money, raiding them, stripping them for parts and shuttering them up after laying off the remaining staff. More like anti-businessman.
Blouise, Bush v Clinton? The conspiracy people will go crazy… …short trip.
Gene,
I hate to say it but I think that’s what’s coming. The Bushie’s would love to beat out the Adam’s family ((gbk … control yourself!)
Mike A.,
Copy that.
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Blouise,
“The Republicans know it too which is why Romney was offered up as the throw away candidate. They’ll keep up their work in the states and wait for 2016. I suspect it will be Jeb and we’ll know that for sure if he starts getting active after Obama is sworn in.”
Yep. They are counting on the short attention span of the electorate to be glossed over before they put their fascist pet Bush back on the selling block. There is literally nothing you could do to convince me, however, that a Bush should be allowed to hold public office of any sort in this country every again and at any level. If they run Jeb? I may not be campaigning for his competition, but you can guarantee I’ll be campaigning against him and his entire criminal family.
SwM,
p.s. the petition to create a constitutional amendment that would effectively overturn the Citizens United decision is gaining strength. Sherrod Brown just signed on.
The amendment is simple — it gives Congress and the states the power to pass campaign finance laws.
SwM,
Neither you or I were big Obama supporters last time around and I doubt either one of us has changed our opinion over the last four years but, that being said, I strongly believe his win this time will be greater in numbers than last time. If you move outside this blog to the base, the young, the minorities and women from all walks of life and political persuasions, his support is rock solid.
Public Polls will be used (it’s all in the way the questions are phrased) to build the suspense so that people don’t sit at home thinking their vote won’t be needed, but inner, privately commissioned polls tell a very different story. He knew he could afford to come out in favor of civil unions without jeopardizing a damn thing.
The Republicans know it too which is why Romney was offered up as the throw away candidate. They’ll keep up their work in the states and wait for 2016. I suspect it will be Jeb and we’ll know that for sure if he starts getting active after Obama is sworn in.
Geeba Geeba: I gave my thoughts on this early on in the thread. This isn’t about “manning up,” whatever the hell that means. Had Lauder been my friend, I would have called Mitt out and beaten the crap out of him the following day. I’m not suggesting that that is the proper approach, but that’s how I was raised. I don’t like people who do things in groups, whether it’s gang assaults or gang rape. And, frankly, I was taught to respect people long before I was in high school, for Pete’s sake.
Jebus, Joan Walsh is the worst of the pseudo-liberals around.
Here she is again, meme-repeating what the wapo reported on, adding nothing but her layer of blather.
That monothought woman single handedly destroyed Salon, I would find some one else to model after.
From hope and change to fear and loathing. Dick Cheney triumphs again.
Boy are all you people just sorry victims? Yes, WE are all victims of “bigger kids” messing with us. Some of us get over it. I was certainly bullied and I remember all the incidents. I got even with some, not others. This is the law of the land folks. Be stronger and better than the others ooorrrr let the State coddle you and be the sorry wimps that some of us are. MAN UP.