12 replies to this topic

[Great Ape]

Romney Apologizes For Bullying In Prep School, Says He Didn't Know Victim Was Gay

Huffington Post | May 10, 2012

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney made a surprise appearance on Fox host Brian Kilmeade's radio show Thursday morning to respond to a lengthy Washington Post story on his time as a prep-school prankster and occasional bully of closeted gay students.

"They talk about the fact that I played a lot of pranks in high school," Romney said. "And they describe some that you just say to yourself, back in high school I just did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended by it, obviously I apologize."

“I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far and for that, I apologize," he added.

It's never quite clear whether a politician's high school years are fair game for political attacks. Romney suggested during the interview that the acts he was apologizing for were merely youthful indiscretions; the Post described him pinning a closeted gay classmate to the ground and cutting his long hair, for example. But with the story suggesting latent homophobia in an adolescent Romney and with President Barack Obama having endorsed same-sex marriage on Wednesday, the piece reverberated.

[Full Story]


Video: What Romney's 'Gay Bullying' Tells Us

Via The Huffington Post: "The Washington Post's Jason Horowitz shook up the political world Thursday morning with a deeply reported story about Mitt Romney's prep school days, an account that included disturbing recollections from former classmates about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's behavior toward two students perceived to be gay. Is Romney a bully?

Ana Kasparian and Huffington Post Science Correspondent Cara Santa Maria break it down on The Young Turks.



Can you believe Mittens was a bully when he was in high school? Who would have thunk it? I thought he was a good-natured, peaceful guy.

It seems everyone but Mittens remembers the incident quite clearly. Imagine that.

Edited by Great Ape, 12 May 2012 - 07:36 AM.

[Great Ape]

Gloves (Mittens?) Off: What the Smackdown Cutting of a Gay Teen's Hair Reveals About Mitt Romney

Huffington Post | May 13, 2012

Oh, I get it. Mitt Romney was only "pulling pranks" when he layed the smackdown and forcibly cut the colored blonde hair of high school classmate John Lauber, who was perceived to be gay, at the prestigious Cranbrook School in the mid-1960s, during the reign of Romney's powerful father as Michiagn's governor.

According to The Washington Post Romney said, "'He [Lauber] can't look like that. That's wrong. Just look at him!'" So Romney (and at least five others who are not the presidential nominee of one of the two largest political parties in the U.S.) targeted and teased Lauber based on Lauber's identity. Witnesses at the time also claimed that Romney tauntingly said "atta girl!" to another gay classmate during class.

Thus Romney didn't just tease John Lauber for perhaps failing to conform to Romney's worldview, or Romney's church's views, or Romney's then-governor-father's need to buy into the societal, dominant-majority, collectivist mindset. No. Rather than simply tease or pick on Lauber, Romney initiated the violent use of force against Lauber, attempting to ensure that Lauber appeared in a fashion acceptable to Romney.

The nexus between Romney's church's view relative to people with other identities remained so strong well into Romney's adulthood -- into his 30s, in fact -- that Romney's church didn't allow black clergy until 1978. So while Romney may try to suppress this claim of discrimination against Lauber's different identity during his school years by calling it a youthful indiscretion, it's more challenging to explain that claim once placed in the context of Romney's not rejecting, as a 30-something, his church's position holding that persons who were black were simply too inferior to be church clergy. Perhaps I missed Romney's personal "evolution" on that matter, but my research shows only that Romney's change on the issue occurred following his church's official change. However, I invite you to correct me if I'm in error. And while no church is beyond criticism, the point here is that Romney's worldview from cradle well into adulthood was shaped by a legitimacy underpinned by treating various "others" as inferior.

[Full Story]




Personally, I don't think the man has changed at all. I'm betting his views on homosexuality, race, women, etc. are pretty much the same as when he was in high school (prep school). I have no doubt he still feels superior to many Americans.

Edited by Great Ape, 13 May 2012 - 09:50 AM.

[Ungodly]

Now Mittens is much smarter, first he plays nice guy to get in, then the bullying while he is in charge.

[Great Ape]

Now Mittens is much smarter, first he plays nice guy to get in, then the bullying while he is in charge.

I have no doubt ole Mittens has refined his bullying to a fine art.

Edited by Great Ape, 16 May 2012 - 12:11 PM.

[Great Ape]

Obama Pot-Smoking Details Revealed In David Maraniss Book

The Huffington Post | May 25, 2012

The meticulous biographer David Maraniss revealed President Barack Obama's early girlfriends in an excerpt of his forthcoming biography, and now the Internet is seizing upon new details of the president smoking marijuana with his buddies at the Punahou School in Hawaii.

Politico's Playbook teased the following excerpt from "Barack Obama: The Story," which will be published in June but is already viewable on Google Books. "When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted 'Intercepted!' and took an extra hit," Maraniss writes. But Obama's buddies, who called themselves the "Choom Gang," didn't mind him messing up the rotation. (After all, this was Hawaii.)

That's not all. Maraniss writes that Obama was known for starting a trend called "TA," short for "total absorption."

"When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning "numbing tobacco") instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around.

Maraniss also describes Obama's technique of "roof hits" while hot-boxing cars. "When the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling," he writes.

The fate of their dealer, Ray, was far more tragic than those of Obama and his largely privileged pals. In a scene that could've been in a Quentin Tarantino movie, a "scorned gay lover" later killed Ray with a ball-peen hammer.

The Huffington Post can't independently verify the claims of Maraniss, who won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1993.

Obama has been less than shy about his drug use in the past, writing about the topic in "Dreams from My Father." "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it," he writes in the memoir.

Obama's tone grows darker, and drugs are an escape for the young Obama, who is facing questions about his own identity:

Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. Except the highs hadn't been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by them, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory. I had discovered that it didn't make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate's sparkling new van, or in the dorm room of some brother you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl.

As Obama moved to higher stage, he's also been forthcoming about drug use. On Bill Clinton's personal triangulation that he had tried marijuana but "didn't inhale," Obama said smiling in 2006, "That was the point, wasn't it?"

Later in "Dreams from My Father," one of Obama's friends was arrested for drug possession and his mother, home from Indonesia, confronted him about it in his room, and he walked out.

The fun continued for Obama at Occidental College in Los Angeles, but he became much more serious after transferring to Columbia University after his sophomore year, when he lived, in his words, "like a monk."

[Source]


Via Washington Post: "The Internet is buzzing after the Washingtonian published a review of Washington Post associate editor David Maraniss's forthcoming book "Barack Obama: The Story," including an excerpt about President Obama's high school clique and their favorite pastime. The group of friends smoked marijuana frequently enough to nickname themselves the "Choom Gang.

Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.



President Obama has already admitted to smoking pot and using a little blow in his book, "Dreams of my Father," so I don't think anyone is going to be surprised by this story. To be fair, since I posted the Mittens was a high school bully story, I felt obligated to post Obama's story about his past too. Good or bad.

Personally, as a pot smoker, this story just makes me like him more.

Edited by Great Ape, 26 May 2012 - 04:39 AM.

[Ungodly]

If I was in a contest against another person, and their plans, ideas, and values were more attractive than my own, I might be tempted to resort to an ad hominem attack too.

The Rethugs will no doubt use this against Obama, it will appeal to their base which is primarily composed of people who love to have their scandal glands massaged by exaggerated bullshit stories tweaked with a maximal level of negative connotation adjectives, with sound bites optimized to trigger a knee jerk reaction. For example False News.

[Great Ape]

If I was in a contest against another person, and their plans, ideas, and values were more attractive than my own, I might be tempted to resort to an ad hominem attack too.

The Rethugs will no doubt use this against Obama, it will appeal to their base which is primarily composed of people who love to have their scandal glands massaged by exaggerated bullshit stories tweaked with a maximal level of negative connotation adjectives, with sound bites optimized to trigger a knee jerk reaction. For example False News.

I don't doubt this will be used against him. The good thing is Obama admitted all this before he was even elected. I suppose the question before the American public is, "Do you want a bully or a pot smoker in the White House?"

[Great Ape]

Classmates: Mitt Romney Impersonated Police Officer In High School And College

The Huffington Post | June 7, 2012

In another questionable display of his inner prankster, it now appears that Romney was also reportedly fascinated with police uniforms, which he sometimes put on to carry out elaborate practical jokes.

According to a report from National Memo, Romney was open about this practice, telling fellow students at Stanford University, where he studied for two years, that he "sometimes disguised himself as a police officer."

According to classmate Robin Madden, Romney once brought a group of classmates up to his dorm room where he showed them his Michigan State Trooper’s uniform.

From the National Memo report:

Said Madden in a recent interview, “He told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father,” George Romney, then the Governor of Michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniformed troopers. “He told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. He also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top of his white Rambler.”

In Madden’s recollection, confirmed by his wife Susan, who also attended Stanford during those years, “we thought it was all pretty weird. We all thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty creepy.’ And after that, we didn’t have much interaction with him,” although both Madden and Romney were prep school boys living in the same dorm, called Rinconada.

Madden's account of a young Romney who excitedly spoke of his habit of impersonating a police officer, which is illegal in many states, has been corroborated in the past by other acquaintances from the GOP presidential candidate's youth.

A magistrate at Cranbrook, Romney's boarding school, recounted a famous prank in which Romney dressed up in full uniform and a badge, and placed a police light on top of his vehicle in order to pull over a car full of friends on a double date.

The story has also been told in the book The Real Romney as well as by fellow students of the future Massachusetts governor.

Graham McDonald, a friend of Romney's at the time who'd helped him plan the joke, explained the high jinks in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer:

As planned, Romney pulled their car over, demanded the vehicle registration, and asked for the keys to the trunk - where he "found" the bottle of bourbon McDonald had taken from his dad and planted as part of the ruse.
"He told me and my friend to get out with him, and that he was taking us in," McDonald remembered.

The idea was to spook the girls.

One of the young women involved told the Washington Post that she was "terrified" at the time, but that they'd all shared in the laugh after they realized what was really happening.

While the treatment of such behavior has no doubt become more severe in the period between Romney's antics and the present, National Memo points out that impersonating a police officer is a crime -- and a fairly serious one at that -- in the states of California, where Stanford is located, and Michigan, where Cranbrook is located. While some may be concerned about the legal implications of the decades-old acts, the episodes appear more indicative of a Romney who, from a young age, displayed a comfort with power and privilege that his peers have suggested he used to act out in his quest for social acceptance.

More juvenile hijinks from Mittens. It seems Mittens sure did like being in authority over others. Maybe he was practicing for the day he became President of the United States.

Edited by Great Ape, 07 June 2012 - 09:19 AM.

[Joe Bloe]

Just the other day on another thread I mentioned that I don't like practical jokes, and I certainly don't like them when they involve police impersonations.

"The idea was to spook the girls."

Where's the fucken joke?

[Ungodly]

To Mittens it was funny because it was other people who were suffering.

[Great Ape]

"Mitt Romney has a uniform fetish," Lawrence O'Donnell teased... returning to deliver a segment on Mitt Romney's college days that promised an exclusive, salacious secret. That secret was that, according to some former classmates, Romney liked to dress up as a police officer, which was a clear outrage given that he did not serve in Vietnam, according to O'Donnell." via Mediaite.

Do you think we should hold Romney's college cop pranks against him? Does it matter which party the pranker is from? Or should Obama use this against him either way? Does this humanize Romney? Or just make him seem even more detached and comfortable with his own power and privilege?

Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks and John Iadarola discuss Romney's college cop uniform pranks and how we should view them now.

Edited by Great Ape, 15 June 2012 - 04:57 AM.

[Ungodly]

I don't think any college pranks should ever rise to the level of a show stopper in an election for POTUS, we all change over time.

While behaviors do change it is also true that the child is father to the man, so to some extent verifiable tales of college pranks might provide an insight into the true nature of a person. For example we might see a sadistic streak in a younger version of, oh, some POTUS candidate, for example.

It is conceivable some persons might conclude that once a person is a bully they will always be a bully.

Still other persons might think they see the same bully streak in opportunistic corporate takeovers that have left hundreds unemployed while certain hypothetical POTUS candidates get richer.

A person could exist who might not like economic vultures in magic underwear.

People form all sorts of opinions.

[Great Ape]

I don't think any college pranks should ever rise to the level of a show stopper in an election for POTUS, we all change over time.

Agreed.

While behaviors do change it is also true that the child is father to the man, so to some extent verifiable tales of college pranks might provide an insight into the true nature of a person. For example we might see a sadistic streak in a younger version of, oh, some POTUS candidate, for example.

It is conceivable some persons might conclude that once a person is a bully they will always be a bully.

Still other persons might think they see the same bully streak in opportunistic corporate takeovers that have left hundreds unemployed while certain hypothetical POTUS candidates get richer.

A person could exist who might not like economic vultures in magic underwear.

I still think Mittens is a bully. He has just recently been a corporate bully. What's changed? Nothing.

Edited by Great Ape, 15 June 2012 - 08:49 AM.