That’s been the refrain from pundits, mostly Republican pundits but also some liberal talking heads, since the story about an incident that occurred in Romney’s high school years, in which he and a pack of friends held down a non-conforming student (thought to be gay by most of his peers) and forcibly cut his long, bleached blond hair. Romney said he didn’t remember that incident but admitted to playing a lot of “pranks” and indulging in “hijinks” when he was in high school, and that he certainly didn’t target anyone for being gay. It was the 60s, after all, and nice boys like him didn’t think about such things. The press has, for the most part, taken its usual wink-wink nudge-nudge boys will be boys approach, asserting that it really wasn’t bullying since it only happened once, and the right wingers have proclaimed this an attempt to paint Romney in an unsympathetic light, lacking empathy and bullying others.
They are so wrong.
First of all, let’s start with the notion that we all did stupid things in high school. That is partially true. Most of us did stuff that makes us cringe in retrospect—but it is more likely to be along the lines of getting drunk and throwing up on our shoes or smoking a joint or having a desperate crush on a guy or girl we now realize was an utter creep. And yes, we all said things we wish we hadn’t said when we realized we’d hurt someone’s feelings—but most of us apologized immediately for those words. Equating that sort of dumb but harmless behavior with Romney’s actions is flat-out wrong. What he did—forcibly holding someone down and inflicting physical damage to him—would have been considered assault or battery depending upon the state, if he had been an adult. Embarrassing actions and tactlessness are not in the same category.
Some have gone so far as to claim that this didn’t amount to bullying because the actions have to be chronic and recurrent. Again, they are wrong. Here is a standard definition of bullying:
Although definitions of bullying vary, most agree that an act is defined as bullying when:
• The behavior hurts or harms another person physically or emotionally. Bullying can be very overt, such as fighting, hitting or name calling, or it can be covert, such as gossiping or leaving someone out on purpose.
• It is intentional, meaning the act is done willfully, knowingly and with deliberation.
• The targets have difficulty stopping the behavior directed at them and struggle to defend themselves.
Bullying can be circumstantial or chronic. It might be the result of a situation, such as being the new student at school, or it might be behavior that has been directed at the individual for a long period of time.
http://www.pacer.org/...
Here’s an account of what happened that day:
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.
“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. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Yes, this was bullying. Lauber was “perpetually teased” for his appearance and for being gay, even though he was not out. That might have been the only time Romney directly attacked him, but it happened in the context of a dark haze of verbal nastiness—and it certainly demolishes Romney’s claim that it had nothing to do with Lauber’s homosexuality. If this young man was the butt of a campaign because they assumed he was gay, there’s no way Romney couldn’t have known. I attended am all-girls high school, and gossip like that would have been all over he school in a day or two. It appears that Lauber’s sexuality made him the target of gossip and verbal attacks even before Romney decided to do a Delilah on his long blond hair.
And while Romney claims not to recall the incident, the other participants and the late John Lauber certainly did. Thomas Buford, who was the school’s wrestling champion, said that to this day he regrets his role in the incident. He calls it a “stupid senseless idiotic thing to do”. He added that he ran into Lauber years later and apologized. Lauber remembered the attack very clearly and said he’d been terrified. We victims of bullying can’t forget; it haunts our nightmares for years.
Another bit of “evidence” cited by the right-wing pundits that this wasn’t anything serious, just adolescent horsing around, is the fact that Lauber’s sisters don’t remember him as being bullied. Of course one of them was at college at the time, so she wouldn’t have had Children and teens often don’t tell their parents or siblings that they’re being bullied and harassed at school because they’re embarrassed or ashamed and often blame themselves. For this reason, experts often point out warning signs for parents.
I know a little bit about bullying from personal experience as well as from the perspective of a former teacher. I wrote about my own experience in junior high here and it made the Rec List. It stank. It made me terribly unsure for many years, inclined to hang back and watch to see if it was safe to join in, and it left me powerless against verbally aggressive workplace bullies. What Romney did was serious, and the victim never forgot it.
And the last claim: everybody does it. Not true. Statistics from 2010 reveal that only 1 in 7 students from k through 12 are either victims or bullies, but that over 50% of have witnessed an incident of bullying. Moreover kids who are “different’ in some way—especially the gay and the disabled are bullied at a much higher rate than others
The pundits are wrong. Not everyone is a bully. Sure, in adolescence we are still learning the rules about what is socially acceptable to say, what is hurtful to others, what should remain unspoken, and we all say things that have unintentionally hurt the feelings of another. Most of us recognize that look of hurt and apologize immediately because we really don’t want to be assholes. Some people, however, enjoy causing pain to others for some reason. They get something out of it. These are the bullies. I had a frenemy in high school who was like that—a very minor league sort of bully. I didn’t recognize her for whst she was at the time—she was smart enough to only make occasional digs—but years alter when we met again, I wondered what I’d ever seen in this still beautiful but unhappy, shallow, superficial woman. She hadn’t changed. I had. And my high school simply didn’t tolerate Mean Girls. Our most popular girls were nice people who were smart, kind, helped others and all round good people. It was a welcome change after the horrors of junior high where an elite clique ran my classroom (although once the nuns found out, that clique was shut down so fast their heads were spinning like Linda Blair’s The Exorcist). Maybe right-wing pundits are more inclined to have behaved badly in high school than the rest of us. Considering the way they often behave on talk shows, interrupting others, talking over them, touching women like they’re harem slaves (Steve Moore, the economist, is the worst example of this; on one occasion on Real Time I think Rachel Maddow would have brained him with her chair if it hadn’t been bolted to the floor), condescending to those less successful to themselves, perhaps they were—and still are.
The big question, other than why the pundits refuse to see Romney’s behavior for what it was, is why the son of a wealthy sitting governor, raised in a strong, deeply religious Mormon home, would have behaved in such an inexcusable fashion? I don’t really know the answer to that. The only one who actually does is Mitt Romney, and he isn’t even acknowledging that the incident occurred, let alone offering a deep and sincere apology to the young man he terrified that day and who remembered it with horror years later. But one former Cranbrook student, a gay author who has written a novel about his time at the school, may be able to shed some light on it.
From what I can gather from the few details that have come out about Romney and his bullying of a student who was perceived as gay (forcefully cutting off his long, bleached-blond hair), a familiar picture emerges. Romney was not a good student nor was he athletic; he was the manager of one of the school teams, a sort of default position for boys who wanted to be athletic and cool and popular — a water boy, in essence. He was considered a class clown, always up to rather cruel pranks. I can picture his situation, though it’s only speculation on my part (I’ve never known any of his friends, though one of his older brothers was a classmate). On the one hand he had an embarrassingly famous father, the governor of Michigan, whom he idolized as the youngest child. On the other he was the sole Mormon, a member of what was definitely seen as a creepy, stigmatized cult in that world of bland Episcopalian Wasps (we had Episcopalian services at chapel three mornings a week). known any of his friends, though one of his older brothers was a classmate). On the one hand he had an embarrassingly famous father, the governor of Michigan, whom he idolized as the youngest child. On the other he was the sole Mormon, a member of what was definitely seen as a creepy, stigmatized cult in that world of bland Episcopalian Wasps (we had Episcopalian services at chapel three mornings a week).
No wonder he became a daring and even violent prankster. He who worried about his own marginal status couldn’t bear the presence of an unapologetic sissy like Lauber, with his long bleached hair (the Mormons, then as now, have insisted on a neat, traditional, conservative appearance, especially in their young missionary men whom they send out all over the world). In scorning and shearing a sissy student and leading a gang of five other boys in this “prank,” Romney may have felt popular and in the right for the first time.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Romney himself says that changed a great deal since his Cranbrook days, especially after he was nearly killed in a car accident during his two-year mission to France. I suspect he did. But he still has that hint of elitism, that faint aura of barely tolerating those who don’t meet his high standards. This is the man who told a group of long term unemployed workers that he understood them because he was unemployed too—when you have an annual income of 21 million, you’re not unemployed; you’re merely living of your investments. The workers weren’t amused. Then there’s his behavior at Bain Capital. He seems to be unable to comprehend that when he shut down a company, that has real world effects on real people: all the workers lose their jobs and face financial challenges he can’t begin to understand. It’s not just naivete. It’s a lack of empathy for those who aren’t just like him. In fact, shutting down a company is a whole lot like holding down a boy presumed to be gay and whose appearance didn’t meet Young Mitt’s standards of dress.
So, Republican pundits, we weren’t all just like Mitt in high schools. Well, maybe you were. Which explains why you are talking heads on Fox and CNN.