A few random thoughts about the Romney bullying story:
First, this story probably has legs. It frames an unpleasant narrative about Mitt Romney’s personality: Not only do his politics suck, he’s an asshole. Personally. The kind of asshole who abuses his pets. Who takes over profitable companies and bleeds them dry, leaving people jobless for no good reason. Who mutilates someone because he’s different. Faggy. In the same way that the story about George H.W. Bush being surprised about a supermarket scanner made him seem out-of-touch during a recession, the Romney bullying story has the potential to make him seem unlikeable in a way that he will have a very hard counteracting.
And we’re not just talking about bullying: shoving, punching, etc. This sounds almost rape-y: a long-haired boy held down to the ground by several boys as one hacks off his hair. Primal.
It doesn’t matter whether the story is even true: the image fits. It works. That’s the problem. And Romney didn’t help with his response: calling the victim a “fellow.” Who uses the word “fellow” in 2012? A “homosexual”? Who uses that word, either? He should have either denied the story entirely, or said something like this:
I did lots of stupid shit when I was a kid. I was kind of wild. Man, I sure wish I could take most of it back. If I could go back in time, I would catch myself being an asshole and beat the shit out of myself. All I can say now is, I am a fervent defender of the oppressed, including gays, and even though I don’t think marriage is a good idea for gays and lesbians, I view them as absolute equals in all ways and will always fight for them and every other American.
Obama has got to be laughing his ass off.
On another note, it’s very cool that bullying has become so uncool. When I was a kid, often victimized by bullies, no one gave a shit. This is progress.
8 Comments.
Yes, Ted, this is progress…..albeit it hideously sluggish and fought tooth-and-nail. You’re right, this is kind of like Dukakis in a tank, it’s one of those moments that might just end him. I wonder if Republicans will stick with him…technically he isn’t the nominee
Okay. I hate to do it, because I usually agree with Ted, but on this one, I think he’s off on a couple of things.
First, “In the same way that the story about George H.W. Bush being surprised about a supermarket scanner made him seem out-of-touch during a recession, the Romney bullying story has the potential to make him seem unlikeable in a way that he will have a very hard counteracting.”
God knows, I don’t like Bush Sr., but the story about the supermarket scanner was misreported by the New York Times. Here’s the snopes link.
Second, I think it’s premature to consider this either the end of or even damaging to the Romney campaign.
Although people are making the appropriate noises, this case simply has too much of the boys-will-be-boys aspect to, and it goes back 45 years. We see this every single election cycle, when every candidate who ever did anything when he was a teenager has salivating bloviators arguing back and forth about what it means. It means nothing. Rather than focus on the real issues, the media will discuss whether someone who stole a candy bar at the age of 12 has the moral fiber to be the president. Can the retiree-aged presidential candidate, who as a 20-year-old got arrested for drinking, be trusted with the nuclear launch codes? Jane Smith, who once had an abortion when she was 24, thinks she has the appropriate decision-making skills, 35 years later, to lead this country.
It’s all theater. I’m sorry. We don’t get to apply the current day standards to what someone did four decades ago. If you need to know why, take a look at the Prison Industrial Complex. People get felony convictions at 25, go to jail for 5 years, and spend the next 40 years shuffling from marginal job to marginal job. Yes, Romney is a terrible human being, but is something pulled from his childhood really the thing that’s going to upset us all to the point of rebellion? Is there really nothing much more recent, much more odious, that can be pulled from the cesspool of Romney’s being?
Romney’s the Republican candidate. Pure and simple. Unless the follow-up to this hair-cutting story is that the boy in question killed himself and left a suicide note specifically stating that “When Mitt Romney held me down and cut my hair, I could no longer go on living,” the Romney campaign has simply gone too far for the Republicans to even begin to entertain the notion of looking for another candidate. And even if they did, they would simply have someone in Romney’s family suddenly have an illness of some sort (Mrs. Romney has Restless Leg Syndrome, and Mitt has, regretfully, had to suspend his campaign to help her through her RLS).
Meanwhile, Obama is still fumbling around. JPMorgan Chase just lost $2 billion (with a “B”) at the Wall Street casino. Granted, the weekend got in the way, but how long is it going to take for an investigation to start? This is a bank that was bailed out, and it’s now screwing up in the same way as it did before. But we’ll all be too busy clicking on Internet poll buttons about our opinions over Romney and what he did a lifetime ago.
I’d suggest that incontrovertible proof Romney is a bons fide bully, from way back, could only HELP him secure the nomination of his party of bullies.
From high school, to Seamus, to Bain Capital, Romney has proven to be consistantly evil through his entire life.
It’s true that some progress has been made on the bullying issue; there are anti-bullying laws popping up here and there (with an exemption for bullying-because-Jesus-told-you-to), a recent documentary, etc. But when people give reasons for why I should put my child in school when he’s old enough, the most common one I’ve gotten from people of all sorts are along these lines: “otherwise he’ll end up weird”; “In school, you *have* to learn how to fit in to a group”; etc. Essentially, the biggest “good” of sending a child to school for most of the people I talk to is not a rigorous education or access to the equipment that a school has, but the value of being treated like shit by your peers and made to feel bad about yourself. We’re still very much a bullying culture, be it in our international policy, or our police, or the way we treat children. We still have a long way to go before we as a country don’t think childhood ought to involve being broken of your individuality.
American voters divide into three: 1) America needs a President who is a bully to keep the rest of the world in line;2) America does not need to consider what a candidate did as a high-school student; and 3) America should eschew electing a bully President.Best guess as of current date: Obama wins re-election, but must face a solid Republican House and Senate, just as Bill Clinton did.
American voters divide into three: 1) America needs a President who is a bully to keep the rest of the world in line;; 2) America does not need to consider what a candidate did as a high-school student; and ; 3) America should eschew electing a bully President.Best guess as of current date: Obama wins re-election, but must face a solid Republican House and Senate, just as Bill Clinton did.
Romney’s a piece of shit.
That’s an advantage.
The Republicans will never, ever back someone who isn’t cruel. Not just evil or bad, but actually obviously sadistic. They follow bullies for the same reason bullies were able to get “posses,” as Romney called it, in high school: to convince themselves that they won’t be the victim. This is why you end up with poor people voting hard rightwing; in their minds, they can’t be abused by their masters because slavish loyalty deserves a reward, and they have never faltered.
Now non-Republicans may not be this massively screwed up, and this story will be a problem for them, but here’s the problem with that: it happened too soon, too early in the process. It will be buried; the media will move on.
This won’t matter much, and the only people who will remember it will likely like Romney for it.