What happened was, that the real Mitt shone through that day. I don't believe people change that much. When your teenage years have passed, all (most) people do is learn to hide or supress certain behaviour, that is perceived by others as unwanted. At their core, they stay the same, Mitt is still Mitt.
What he has done that day is one of the most sickening things I've ever heard about (on par with consuming ground up baby-foetuses). These acts utterly destroy people. He did it because he found this boys hair offensive. He should have gone to jail for it. But at least now we know what kind of basterd he really is.
This. So very much this.
Oh, I don't know. Just because when I clicked on the link I got a pop up inviting me to sign up for Ann Coulter's newsletter doesn't mean anything.
So a self reported anecdote about how, at age ten, he pushed a girl away when being teased about her being a girlfriend would be bullying? And shows an insight into his character? I'm asking about what the reaction would be reaction to an actual bullying incident, not some nonsense picked up by right wing crazies.Oh, I don't think it will affect him much, if at all. But I liked LAgrunions point -- that had this been a story about Obama, many people would have been surprised and disturbed.
With Romney it's a shrug, and no surprise at all.
Well, to be fair, I'm not surprised either.
I may be less inclined to shrug it off, or make excuses for it, or suggest that it was somehow unavoidable what with the young Mr. Lauber being such a tasty bit of prey and all. I may be less likely to ask what the big deal is since bullying is somehow entirely normal and nothing to get het up about. And I may probably never be able to bring myself to tut-tut over how sad it all is as if we should feel sympathy for Romney equal to what we feel for the guy he assaulted with a sharp instrument wielded as a weapon. But no, I'm not in the least bit surprised to learn of this incident from Mitt's youth.
I'm also not surprised to see Mitt Romney giggle in his response with that shit-eating grin of his and that combination of nervousness and arrogance that is the hallmark of an inadequate, incompetent loser who has lived his entire life shielded by unearned social privilege, which has protected him from ever bearing direct personal responsibility for his bad acts and indiscretions.
I would be willing to bet real money right now that Romney not only remembers every moment of that assault, but has enjoyed a good laugh over it with his friends from time to time over the years. I would be willing to bet that if he was pressed on it, we would learn that he knows that society might frown on that sort of behavior but he has no idea why. I'd bet that he's been told to keep his mouth shut about for political reasons, but again, he has no idea why because he doesn't see anything wrong in what he did. I'd be willing to bet that, if pressed, he'd say Lauber got a big laugh out of it himself, just like he insists to this day that the dog loved being strapped to the roof the car in an open cage for long road trips.
I don't know what's psychologically or emotionally or developmentally or neurologically wrong with Mitt Romney, but this guy has absolutely no connection to other living things of any kind. No empathy, no sympathy, no fellow-feeling, no imagination, not even any ability to observe and learn.
He seems genuinely incapable of telling when he is hurting an animal. I do not believe he understands that it's not okay, it's not just good clean wholesome fun, to beat another person down and attack him with scissors. To this day, after all these years in which he could have grown up, he seems still not to know this.
He doesn't know that it's rude to denigrate food that his hosts offer him -- the wince-worthy cookie moment in Pennsylvania was mirrored by a similar moment during his gubernatorial campaign in Boston when he turned down a cannoli from a famous Italian bakery in the North End because he didn't know what it was. He doesn't know that it's not okay to make jokes about unemployment to the unemployed, or to brag about putting people out of work to an audience of people whose jobs his policy platform threatens, or to shrug off issues like poverty, women's rights, and international war as if they are unimportant and it's stupid and obnoxious of reporters to bring them up.
He seems to have no clue whatsoever that anything he says could possibly be insulting or hurtful or offensive to other people. It seems as if the idea of other people's reactions to things he says and does never enters his head at all. It's a non-topic, just as if all those other people don't even really exist. Every time I watch him, I get the horrible feeling that no one exists in his world but him. He found it easy and comfortable to strap the dog to the car roof, so therefore the dog enjoyed it, too. He thought it was a laff-riot to attack, terrorize and humiliate the Lauber kid, so therefore, it's no biggie. Lauber probably enjoyed the joke, too, right? The more I think about him, the more I expect someday we'll learn he goes about wishing people into cornfields.
Romney's personal behavior runs the gamut from idiotic to blood-chilling. There are many possible explanations for why he is this way. Every single one of those possible explanations is an overwhelming argument for why he should never be president or hold any other office of power. This guy ain't right.
Well, Adlai Stevenson accidentally shot and killed another kid when he twelve or thirteen years old. It didn't stop him from running for President twice.
Also not elected.
