Imagine the scene:
A fancy private high school, where the students wear ties and carry briefcases, and live in dorms. Every guy has their hair cut short. Everyone looks pretty much alike.
A new student, John Lauber, has bleached blonde hair, and wears it long - covering one eye.
Others make fun of the new guy, teasing him for the hair and what the hair might mean... that the new kid is gay.
Mitt Romney, a Senior at the time, told his friend Matthew Friedemann, “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!”
A few days later, according to five witnesses, this happened:
"...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."
Okay, this homophobic attack (
as reported in the Washington Post) happened back in 1965 - I wasn't even born yet. Forty-seven years before Mitt Romney is running for President of the United States of America. Should it matter?
When Romney was asked about it,
here's his response:
Asked specifically as to whether he remembered an anecdote in the
story that describes Romney cutting the hair of one of his classmates
who was “presumed” to be gay because the candidate did not like his long
hairstyle, Romney responded, “You know, I don’t.”
“I don’t remember that incident,” Romney said, laughing, before
adding that whether someone was “homosexual, that was the furthest thing
from my mind back in the 1960s, so that was not the case.”
I thought
this editorial by Charles M. Blow in the New York Times had some great points, including:
"...honorable men don’t chuckle at cruelty."
and
"Targeting the vulnerable is an act of cowardice. The only way to
vanquish cowardice is to brandish courage. Romney refused to do so."
and
"Americans want to know that the boy from that prep school grew up in
knowledge and wisdom and grew deep in compassion and empathy. We want to
know that his shoulders are now wide enough to bear blame and his heart
is big enough to seek contrition."
Instead, what Romney did was laugh about it, say he didn't remember the incident, and failed to express regret or show he'd learned anything in the forty-seven years since he viciously attacked a classmate for being "different."
He missed what might have been a transformative, teachable moment that addressed the epidemic of bullying today.
Mitt Romney was a High School Bully.
I think it does matter.
What do you think?
Namaste,
Lee
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