Harrowing Account

by Stephen H. Miller on May 11, 2012

Without doubt, the Washington Post‘s report of the young Mitt Romney as a prep school bully and gay-basher is harrowing:

Romeny … spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. 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.

A few days later [found] 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. … “It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”

The incident reportedly haunted Lauber, who died of liver cancer several years ago. It troubled the other perpetrators as well, the Post reports, but Romney—the instigator and scissor-wielder—claims no memory of the attack, which begs credulity, although he apologized for unspecified “pranks” that went too far. Romney also claimed that homosexuality “wasn’t something we all discussed or considered. So that’s simply just not accurate.” Which also rings false.

The account is reverberating around the Huffington Post and the left-liberal blogosphere, got picked up by a few other news outlets but hasn’t broken out more widely. It comes on the heels Romney’s failure to stand by his openly gay foreign policy spokesman, Ric Grenell, who resigned under attack by the religious right (not helped by parallel attacks on Grenell by the “progressive” left, let me add), and Romney’s reiterating his support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in every state. Whether this has any traction beyond those already in the Democrats’ camp will be telling.

More. The truth, the truth, what is the truth? Breitbart has a round up of conservative blogosphere responses charging media distortion and double standards. The latter I believe.

Still more. Obama mocked and shoved a plump girl as his friends yelled taunts. [Added] But at least Obama remembers, and tells it, himself. And a big difference, as our commenters note, is that he regrets it.

Further thoughts. My guess is that the reports of this incident won’t change anyone’s mind. Those opposed to Romney will have fresh reason to reject him; those in his camp will dimiss the story as overblown and distorted. But I’m fairly certain that Romney will receive a far smaller portion of the gay vote that did John McCain (who strongly opposed the federal marriage amendemnt and, at that time, said he was open to ending ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’). Not that I think Romney’s campaign cares very much about getting the 27% of the self-identified gay vote that McCain garnered according to CNN (the total self-identified gay vote was just 4 percent of all votes cast).

8 Comments for “Harrowing Account”

posted by bls on May 11, 2012

I remember things like this happening in high school. Once a pack of football players chased a kid with long hair until he ended up jumping out a 3rd floor window and broke both legs.

Romney doesn’t seem to realize that claiming he doesn’t remember it makes him sound like a sociopath…..
posted by Tom Scharbach on May 11, 2012

The account is reverberating around the Huffington Post and the left-liberal blogosphere, got picked up by a few other news outlets but hasn’t broken out more widely.

I didn’t dig down to see what the bulk of the 2,471 news articles that showed up in a Google News search on “Romney bully”, but I think the story has “broken out more widely” if the outlets on the first page of the search are any reflection: New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Herald, ABC News, Washington Post, Austin American-Statesman, BBC News, Christian Science Monitor, New Yorker, NJ Star-Ledger, TIME, Toronto Star, Fox News, Newsday, The Week Magazine, CBS News, Vanity Fair, The Detroit News, The Atlantic, NBC News, The Seattle Times, CNN …

Romney, the instigator and scissor-wielder, claims no memory of the attack, which begs credulity, although he apologized for unspecified “pranks” that went too far. Romney also claimed that homosexuality “wasn’t something we all discussed or considered. So that’s simply just not accurate.” Which also rings false.

I don’t know what to say about it, or even, really, to think about the assault itself.

High school boys have no impulse control at all, and most of us, looking back at those years, did our share of things that we have no reason to be proud of doing and some things that we are (or should be) ashamed of doing. In that respect, Romney is no different than most of us.

But I don’t think that we should make light of the assault, either. Putting a high school kid on the ground and chopping off his hair is an assault, and serious. It isn’t a “prank”. Today, the police would be involved in an assault of that nature, and should be. Lauber seems to have been a tough kid, and kept a level head, and shrugged if off to some extent. But the assault could well have had very different results. The effects of bullying are well known and well documented, and Romney and his friends are very lucky that Lauber was as tough as he seems to have been. The assault is exactly the kind of bullying that the “It Gets Better” project is trying to address. We should keep that in mind. The fact that Romney doesn’t seem to be aware of the seriousness of what he did is telling.

What bothers me, as it seems to bother you, is that Romney denies remembering the assault.

I don’t believe that Romney is telling the truth about not remembering. My guess is that he tried to pass the assault off as a “forgettable prank” in his early statements, and is now stuck with the lie.

But if I’m wrong about that, and Romney really doesn’t remember the assault, then it suggests that he was a very troubled teen — either (1) the assault reflected a type of behavior so common in Romney’s life at the time that it is/was unremarkable and forgettable, or (2) he was a sociopath, indifferent to the effects of his behavior. Since I don’t believe him about not remembering, I don’t think that Romney was a sociopath or all that much worse than many high school boys, but he and his campaign should take into account how his denials sound to ordinary people, as bls pointed out.

I don’t know whether this will “stick” or not. If it does stick, it will be because of Romney’s handling of the issue as an adult, not because of his behavior in high school. He could have put this to rest in a sentence of two, but now, because of his initial mishandling, the story has grown legs of his own making.

Romney also claimed that homosexuality “wasn’t something we all discussed or considered. So that’s simply just not accurate.” Which also rings false.

It is ludicrous.
posted by Houndentenor on May 11, 2012

The story has certainly broken out beyond the “left wing blogosphere.” I saw it on the evening news before reading about it online.

I don’t know what Romney does or does not remember. Memory is a funny thing. We all have the ability to choose not to remember things that make us feel bad about ourselves and our choices. It’s also possible that there were enough similar incidents that this one just doesn’t stick out in his mind. Does any of this sound atypical for the kind of environment that Mitt was in at the time?

What is true is that people will either latch on to this or reject it because it fits or doesn’t fit with their idea of who he is. It’s easy enough for me to believe that a man who would get richer and richer by firing people and sending their jobs to China would also be a high school bully. That doesn’t, of course, make the story more or less true. It just makes me feel better about not liking Mittens in the first place. I’m sure those who do (or who want to anyway) will find a way to dismiss this incident as they did Bush and Cheney’s DUIs.
posted by Tom Scharbach on May 11, 2012

Still more. Obama mocked and shoved a plump girl as his friends yelled taunts.

I think that it might be instructive for you, Stephen, to read the President’s account, which begins on page 61 of “Dreams from My Father”:

Still in my first month, I was no worse off than the other children who were relegated to the category of misfits — the girls who were too tall or too shy, the boy who was mildly hyperactive, the kids whose asthma excused them from PE.

There was one other child in my class, though, who reminded me of a different sort of pain. Her name was Coretta, and before my arrival she had been the only black person in our grade. She was plump and dark and didn’t seem to have many friends. From the first day, we avoided each other but watched from a distance, as if direct contact would only remind us more keenly of our isolation.

Finally, during recess one hot, cloudless day, we found ourselves occupying the same corner of the playground. I don’t remember what we said to each other, but I remember that suddenly she was chasing me around the jungle gyms and swings. She was laughing brightly, and I teased her and dodged this way and that, until she finally caught me and we fell to the ground breathless. When I looked up, I saw a group of children, faceless before the glare of the sun, pointing down at us.

“Coretta has a boyfriend! Coretta has a boyfriend!”

The chants grew louder as a few more kids circled us.

“She’s not my g-girlfriend,” I stammered. I looked to Coretta for some assistance, but she just stood there looking down at the ground. “Coretta’s got a boyfriend! Why don’t you kiss her, mister boyfriend?”

“I’m not her boyfriend!” I shouted. I ran up to Coretta and gave her a slight shove; she staggered back and looked up at me, but still said nothing. “Leave me alone!” I shouted again. And suddenly Coretta was running, faster and faster, until she disappeared from sight. Appreciative laughs rose around me. Then the bell rang, and the teachers appeared to round us back into class.

For the rest of the afternoon, I was haunted by the look on Coretta’s face just before she had started to run: her disappointment, and the accusation. I wanted to explain to her somehow that it had been nothing personal; I’d just never had a girlfriend before and saw no particular need to have one now. But I didn’t even know if that was true. I knew only that it was too late for explanations, that somehow I’d been tested and found wanting; and whenever I snuck a glance at Coretta’s desk, I would see her with her head bent over her work, appearing as if nothing had happened, pulled into herself and asking no favors.

My act of betrayal brought me some room from the other children, and like Coretta, I was mostly left alone. I made few friends, learned to speak less often in class, and managed to toss a wobbly football around. But from that day forward, a part of me felt trampled on, crushed …

Think about it a bit before you buy into the idea of equivalency.

And go beyond the obvious differences, like the fact that the President was 10, not 18, and that there is an obvious difference between what happened on that playground and what happened in that high school hallway.

The President sensed, even then, that his actions were wrong, that he had hurt that young girl in a way that could not be explained away. Do you see any of that in the Romney incident? Any indication at all that Romney understood at the time, in any way, that the assault was wrong?

It is pretty clear from the fact that the President considered the story important — important enough to put into an auto-biography as a grown man — and that his betrayal, his sense having been tested and found wanting, were life lessons. Do you see any of that in Romney’s explanation that the assault was a “prank” that he doesn’t even remember?

I don’t know about you, but my view is that the right-wing noise machine is morally tone deaf in this case.

“Harrowing Account” is a case where you got it right the first time, in your initial post. Echoing undigested right-wing “spin” isn’t working to your credit or advantage.
posted by Carl on May 12, 2012

This will follow the usual line – Romney will become a martyr to many on the right, who say the “liberal media” is out to get him. We will hear about how that big old Soros machine never investigated Obama’s past. Romney will sort of distance himself (as he’s already done), and the media will move on, fascinated by more important things, like Bristol Palin’s fury over gay marriage and the Obama daughters.

If anything, this will get Romney support – a lot of people out there probably like the idea of a gay teen being bullied.

I’m more concerned by Romney today, a man who continually blunders from one anti-gay position to another, his latest being a backtracking from supporting gay adoption to saying, essentially, what can I do, the states allow it.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57433104-503544/romney-backs-away-from-same-sex-adoptions/

Romney has clearly been advised that being anti-gay is a winning position, and he is moving further and further on that subject, from his opposition to civil unions, to his sudden cooling on gay adoption, to his refusal to support a gay spokesman he hired.

What bothers me most about this is that this could easily pay off for him. Those who vote and donate based on hating gays will love it, and everyone else will just shrug, as many people, including many gay people, don’t care about anti-gay legislation when it comes time to vote.

That he sees this as a winning strategy should tell us something about where our country is and where it’s heading.
posted by Tom Scharbach on May 12, 2012

That he sees this as a winning strategy should tell us something about where our country is and where it’s heading.

While it does appear that Romney has finally found an issue that will consummate his marriage with the social conservatives — and Romney cannot win unless the social conservative base is energized — the country is clearly headed in the other direction on “equal means equal”.

And that includes Republicans. A May 11 memo from Jan van Lohuizen, a leading Republican pollster/strategist, notes this:

Polling conducted among Republicans show that majorities of Republicans and Republican leaning voters support extending basic legal protections to gays and lesbians. These include majority Republican support for:

Protecting gays and lesbians against being fired for reasons of sexual orientation

Protections against bullying and harassment;

Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell;

Right to visit partners in hospitals;

Protecting partners against loss of home in case of severe medical emergencies or death;

Legal protection in some form for gay couples whether it be same sex marriage or domestic partnership (only 29% of Republicans oppose legal recognition in any form).

It is easy for those of us on the progressive/liberal side of the political spectrum, who have long since moved on from the idea of civil unions as a viable solution and are focused on marriage equality, to lose sight of the changes that are occurring even in the Republican Party.

Think about the polling on “relationship recognition” for a second — less than a third of Republicans currently oppose legal recognition in any form. For Romney, winning the support of that base is essential, but that base is dying.

The fact is that the Republican rank-and-file is moving along with the rest of the country, albeit more slowly. Anti-equality politicians like Romney will hold sway, even in the Republican Party, for no more than a few election cycles.

But that doesn’t mean that this election cycle isn’t critical for pro-equality Republicans. I’ll make two predictions, based on forty-plus years of political experience:

(1) If Romney loses this election, the 2016 Republican candidate will be taking positions more in line with Jan van Lohuizen’s memorandum than with Romney’s current positions, and by 2020 a presidential candidate holding Romney’s current positions will be too radioactive to win nomination.

(2) If Romney wins this election, the social conservative hold on the Republican Party will continue during his tenure, and the pace of change within the Republican Party will be slowed by 4-8 years, at a minimum.

In my view, that is the primary reason why it is important for pro-equality conservatives to get off the Rom-boat this election cycle and support pro-equality Republicans.

I agree with Stephen that bringing change to the Republican Party is critical to our long-term goal of achieving equal protection under the law, for no other reason than that the Republican Party dominates in many states where the battle for equality will have to be fought in coming years.

And it is for that reason that I’m slack-jawed when I see pro-equality conservatives like Stephen hop on board with Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the pack of noisy, win-at-all-costs right-wing blatherheads, as Stephen did in this thread by passing on the current “Obama mocked an shoved a plump girl” meme without bothering to digest it.

I notice that Stephen has now modified his update to include “But at least Obama remembers, and tells it, himeself. And a big difference, as our commenters note, he regrets it.”

But Stephen continues to miss the larger point entirely.

Stephen’s update continues to treat the two episodes as moral equivalents, different only in that the President “remembers, tells it, and regrets it”.

I’ll grant you that there is a world of difference between the President’s adult reaction to his behavior and Romney’s recent reaction, and that the difference — Obama clearly sees his behavior as a life lesson learned, while Romney clearly doesn’t see his behavior in that light — is what is important today.

But that isn’t the whole of the story, either.

Stephen continues to equate the embarrassed behavior of a 10-year-old fourth-grader being taunted on the schoolyard by other boys about a “girlfriend” as no different than an 18-year-old high school senior (a young man old enough to vote and serve in the military, old enough to act like an adult and be expected to do so most of the time) initiating and leading an unprovoked assault on another young man because he was “different”. It makes no sense.

I have no doubt that Stephen posted the “mocked and shoved” update to score points on Obama without really thinking about the matter. And looking at Stephen’s reaction (“harrowing”) in his initial post, I have no doubt that Stephen was (at least initially) troubled by Romney’s behavior as a young man and more so by his adult behavior (passing it off as “hijinks” and “prank”, claiming not to remember).

But what in the world is going on with this? Why is Stephen, committed to equality as his own lights show him the way, going to such lengths to support Romney, who has taken extreme anti-equality views, even to the right of his own party rank-and-file if van Lohuizen’s polling is correct?

Why is Stephen, of all people, a man who has been working for equality for decades, so determined to elect a man like Romney? I don’t get it at all.
posted by Jorge on May 12, 2012

Obama mocked and shoved a plump girl as his friends yelled taunts.

First Obama eats a dog, then he shoves plump girls? What is with this Romney counterattack machine?

Anyway, I wish all anti-gay bullying were this civilized. I realize in this day and age such a thing would not be tolerated because it is not very harmless, but this sounds more like “Mean Girls” fare than anything else.

But I don’t think that we should make light of the assault, either. Putting a high school kid on the ground and chopping off his hair is an assault, and serious. It isn’t a “prank”. Today, the police would be involved in an assault of that nature, and should be. Lauber seems to have been a tough kid, and kept a level head, and shrugged if off to some extent. But the assault could well have had very different results. The effects of bullying are well known and well documented, and Romney and his friends are very lucky that Lauber was as tough as he seems to have been. The assault is exactly the kind of bullying that the “It Gets Better” project is trying to address. We should keep that in mind. The fact that Romney doesn’t seem to be aware of the seriousness of what he did is telling.

Oh, pooh. I think it’s just boys being boys.

Yes, “Mean Girls” stuff really does drive people to suicide. But part of me thinks that’s a function of the deteriorating intergenerational mental health. So just suspend them and be done with it.
posted by TomJeffersonIII on May 13, 2012

Yeah, kids do stupid things. I am an undergraduate student now and, yeah, their are some stupid or silly things I did or said in middle school or high school that I regret.

But, if someone asked me about it, I would probably admit that I did it and that it was stupid. Yet, what Mitt did is a different from cutting class or “smoking in the boys room.”

Given the (thankfully) increase focus on doing something about anti-gay bullying and gay kids getting harassed to the point of suicide, I think that Mitt really missed the boat on this issue.

Didn’t someone in his campaign staff dig into these sort of issues and come up with spin for them? I mean, it would seem obvious that this sort of thing would come out in a campaign and would not be taken as ‘harmless hijinks’.

I have to wonder why Mitt had not already been prepped on this issue. He could have spun it as a ‘youthful indiscretion’ (as Democrats and Republicans have done) and used the example to come out in favor of strong anti-harassment protection for all students (their is a bill in Congress about just that).

It reminds me of the entire thing with not releasing his taxes in the sense that either his campaign staff is totally incompetent or that he is not listening to them, which does not actually bode well for his leadership/compassion/empathy/common sense skills.