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.Romney declined an interview, and a spokeswoman said "The stories of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents."
“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....
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....
Another story:
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!” In the culture of that time and place, that was not entirely out of the norm. Hummel recalled some teachers using similar language.ADDED: Obama bullied a black girl:
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."Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance."
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.
UPDATE: Romney apologizes:
"I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended ... obviously I apologize," Romney said on Kilmeade & Friends, a radio show....
"I don't remember that incident and I'll tell you I certainly don't believe that I ... thought the fellow was homosexual," Romney said. "That was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s, so that was not the case."
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226 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 226 of 226I hate it when TItus isn't really Titus.
You can expect the bullshit lies fed to the eager and willing press by Obama to continue. Telling lies comes naturally to fascists.
Titus - Romney's 65 years old. Prep school was 50 years ago. I doubt you're close to that old. Can you name all the kids you went to kindergarten with? That couldn't be more than 20 or 30 years ago for you, about half as long ago as Romney was in prep school.
I'm 61. I can't remember the full names of everyone I played basketball with for four years, let alone other guys I just saw everyday or had a fight with. You believe what you believe not because it's the truth but because it's what you want to believe. Obama and his fascist battalion know how to play you and those like you and they've sucked you in hook line and sinker.
Consider this: what will gays gain by being legally able to marry? More pain than gain. My lesbian sister has been in 3-4 serious, long term relationships. She's always been the highest income earner. She owns a house in Alabama where she works and one in Tennessee where our mother lives. She travels back and forth and stays at her own house at either place. She lives comfortably. Had she been married just once, she would have lost half of what she has, maybe more.
Marriage is a farce. In today's U.S. it's a money grab or power grab by extortionist threats of divorce, usually by a woman. It's bullshit to call this a human right. Rights should give you more freedom and independence. This does none of that. It puts you in a relationship that most likely will end poorly, at the mercy of another person and the government forcing you go give away half your belongings under threat of imprisonment.
If you want real rights and real freedom, get the government out of the marriage business completely. People could get married in churches or where ever, but you wouldn't need a license or to register with the government. You would make clear agreements of ownership as you went along, just as you and a college roommate would do.
Gay marriage is just another decoy to keep people from looking at the real threats to our freedoms and most basic rights while the lovely Democratic fascists whittle away at them.
I do remember every asshole's name who beat the shit out of me from 10-15 and I am 40.
I would remember the name of the jerk that got a group of 5 guys together that cut my hair, definitely. I know this prep school and it is not exactly large either, neither was my school.
But Romney said he doesn't remember it...and then lies and says he didn't think the guy was gay.
Such bullshit.
Yes, Obama is horrible and a commie and everything but Romney is suck a phony and liar.
Can't you not love Obama and also think Romney is a liar without being a commie loving fag who hates America?
At least be honest people.
Chick, because I voted for Romney when he was a completely different candidate.
Everything he says and does now is different from the reasons I voted for him then.
Everything.
I mean come on. Do you guys really think some Massachusetts governor, who was a republican of this state would of won if he was the person now?
Remember, Mass is horrible and liberal and has one of the lowest unemployment rates and highest real estate rates and growing exponentially in the country, but still horrible and very very expensive. Also highest education and lowest divorce rates in the country. Go figure.
And taxes, we are actually in the middle, below many red states.
Now culturally and educationally number one. No wonder all the Romney's never left.
We never felt the rest of your real estate pains. My place has gone up 30% in the past 3 years. There is a waiting list to get into my building.
Poor Arizona and Florida.
Titus said...
"Romney didn't remember it but he does remember that he didn't think the kid was gay because back then that wasn't talked about. So he doesn't remember this but remembers that he didn't think the kid was gay."
You seem to be implying there is a logical inconsistency between the two statements but there is no logical inconsistency. Mitt remembers the kid and remembers that he did not think he was gay. He could have easily extended the statement to say that there was not a single kid in his school that he thought was gay.
I am a couple of years younger than Mitt and went to high school around the same time but a couple of years later. Back then there was zero consciousness of gayness in my high school. Gay did not even mean homosexual back then. We didn't know anybody anywhere who was out or even that the concept of "out" existed. We didn't discuss homosexuality among ourselves because it did not even occur to us to discuss it.
Gays were deeply closeted, there was no public, visible gay movement. Psychologists treated homosexuality as a psychological disorder. I cannot remember even thinking about the idea in high school that men might have sex with other men, it did not occur to me.
I had a good friend in high school who went to my church who I now realize was gay and really acted gay but at the time I had no clue.
The kid that got his hair cut was deeply in the closet at the time of the incident. There is a very good chance that very few kids (maybe none other than the victim) in that high school realized at that time that the victim was gay.
Shame on Obama and the Wapo JournoListers for creating out of thin air the homophobia aspect of this tempest in a teacup.
This is all about Obama manipulating gays to get them to donate more bucks to his campaign. It is a shame that dem Privileged Interest Groups (PIGs) are too stupid to realize when they are being manipulated.
And finally, the gays will not get federal marriage until the supreme court decides. And they will likely decide within 2-5 years and it will be done.
Ted Olson and the libtard will argue before them and it be done.
Alabama and Mississippi will be outraged but it will be over.
Thank God.
Oh my God! I just feel sorry for you people!WoW!!! You know Romney is an absolute nightmare...but you despise our president so much that you would vote for anyone....anyone!!But him. I'll think of you all as I vote for the best man for the job!
growing exponentially in the country
I believe it was the 2000 census in which Mass. was the ONLY state to lose population. You're fading away, just like Europe, but you'll come South to retire because it's cheaper and there will be young people to look after you. They may be speaking Spanish, however.
Obviously Romney was reacting to hair that wasn't the right height.
Hair is like trees, it's important for it to be the right length.
BTW, can the oldies around here confirm that in the 60's there was zero negative thoughts re the gayness of lite-loafe types? This part of Romney's response seems improbable. I wouldn't have guessed that boys were so anti-anti-homo back then.
Startling article by Dick Morris:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/10/romney_should_win_in_a_landslide_114108.html
Morris, Bill Clinton's personal pollster whose polls guided Clinton's every move, says that Romney is going to win in a landslide. He says current polls are inaccurate because they are not polling likely voters. He also says that undecideds will break big for the challenger because they almost always break big for the challenger.
Read the article, it is chock full of interesting stats.
That should have been "light-loafers types."
The first part of the 60's were like the 50's extended. Rock and roll hit in the 50's. The Beatles hit the USA around 1963 but the culture didn't really start changing big time until the summer of love in San Francisco in 1967. Stonewall didn't happen until 1969. Police were still raiding gay bars in NYC in 1969.
Things that were much higher priority than gay rights that consequently happened much faster were the Viet Nam War and protests against it, women's lib, black power including some huge riots, drug revolution, sexual revolution/birth control among straights.
We turned American culture upside down inside out in the 60's but gay rights was not a leading trend among all this change.
AJ Lynch says "I have heard Biden picked on the kids who were smarter than him ..."
Sorry, AJ, but that just doesn't pass the smell test. You trying to tell us Joe took on the entire class, and all the kids he ran into on the street as well?
Perhaps you got the story wrong. Maybe he picked on the kids who were dumber than he, in which case he led a very docile early life indeed. To this very day, in fact, he would not have to have learned how to clench his fist.
PB&J, I went to a boys' day school in the 70's, and I can only remember once when someone was called a homo, etc, when it wasn't a joke or general insult. Buggery was never a topic of discussion, though it may have been occurring, for all I know. But WASPs didn't talk about any sex acts in public then.
Steve, I doubt that effeminate, homo-ish boys were never taunted, harassed, bullied, or forcibly barbered in the sixties because their non-sissy high school classmates were too busy fixating on macro movements.
If gayness didn't make you a target in the 60s there would have been less closeted folks, not more. Duh.
Of course the cultural revolution occurred in the 60's so attitudes in the 70's were enormously different than the 60's.
1965 was pre-cultural revolution for the most part, certainly wrt homosexuality. I think there were laws against homosexuality in 1965. Virtually nobody was openly gay in 1965. Homosexuality had zero mind share among the vast majority of straights in 1965.
"pbAndjFellowRepublican said...
Steve, I doubt that effeminate, homo-ish boys were never taunted, harassed, bullied, or forcibly barbered in the sixties because their non-sissy high school classmates were too busy fixating on macro movements.
If gayness didn't make you a target in the 60s there would have been less closeted folks, not more. Duh."
The weak always get beat up by the strong, that's the way man rolls. That doesn't mean the bullies knew their victims were gay, just that they were pussies. The pussies got victimized because they were weak not because they were gay. There were lots of fights, we fought for entertainment.
Homosexuality was illegal and considered a psychological disorder by the medical community so there was no incentive for gays to come out and there was no support structure. Probably if they came out back in 1965 there would have been an appalled, confused reaction and a real good chance that they would have been abused. So practically all the gays were in the closet. There was no anti gay movement in high schools because there were no openly gay guys to react to. There was no gay movement in 1965.
Maybe somebody who was gay back then could relate his experiences. My experience as a straight was that, though there was at least one gay kid in my high school, I did not realize he was gay and it never occurred to me to even wonder if anybody in HS was gay.
Homosexuality had zero mindshare, we did not think about it at all. There was a lot going on back then.
The 50's and well into the 60's were all about conformity. Virtually nobody wanted to be different, everybody wanted to blend in.
I think the gay rights movement started in NYC and they had their first march in Nov, 1969 (just barely occurred in the 60's)!
Looks like we have closed the loop. Pbj thinks that some gay kids who are effeminate, strange, and weak get beat up because of their appearance and behavior and that they appear and behave that way because they are gay. Probably true.
My point is that back in 1965 in most of the country, some gay effeminate, strange, weak kids were getting beat up but it mostly wasn't because their oppressors thought they were gay, it was because they were effeminate, strange, and weak.
Homosexuality was on the down low in 1965, it had an extremely low public profile.
I am getting righter and righter.
ABC News is actually... fact checking the Washington Post. Beautiful.
“The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda. There will be no more comments from the family,” she said.
Also: “Even if it did happen, John probably wouldn’t have said anything,” Christine Lauber said.
Also also: "When ABC News showed her the story, Christine Lauber’s eyes welled up with tears and she became agitated. She also corrected the story, saying her brother was a boarder, not a day student."
-- So. Current level of belief in this: 1.5 of 5. It may have happened, but it sure as hell doesn't seem as big of a deal as the WaPo made it sound.
And, the WaPo finally updated White's comments... with another factually incorrect statement. He did not know about until the WaPo called him, not several weeks before they did. No notice of a correction appears at the top of the story.
This entire story is made up:
The older sister of Mitt Romney’s former high school classmate said she has no knowledge of any bullying incident involving her brother and the GOP presidential candidate
They are going to put out a statement through their attorney.
Epic MSM Fail.
Jay said...
This entire story is made up:
It hardly matters for now, Jay. The Clooney event happened. Promises were made. Cash will be collected and bundled. Mission was accomplished.
I'll think of you all as I vote for the best man for the job!
So you're voting for Romney too?
Titus - looking back at college, let alone high school, I can now see guys and gals that were gay that at the time it never crossed my mind they were gay. For myself, and many others I assume, a person's sexual orientation wasn't an issue. Other personality factors counted for more. It sounds like, because of your experiences with a select few, you've generalized your perceptions of many.
I'll think of you all as I vote for the best man for the job!
You're not voting for Obama either?
Because I can't say for sure Romney is the best man --- but I can say, with no question, Obama is not.
And, the WaPo finally updated White's comments... with another factually incorrect statement. He did not know about until the WaPo called him, not several weeks before they did. No notice of a correction appears at the top of the story.
Also relevant...the Post asked him about it last year. Months ago.
They were holding on to this story for a reason.
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