Thread: Mitt Romney Outed As Anti-Gay High School Bully

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

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"I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended ... obviously I apologize," Romney said on Kilmeade & Friends, a radio show.


"Romney said he doesn't remember an incident from 1965 described in The Washington Post."

From the USA Today article you posted JohnDoe2

May 10, 2012 5:55pm

Former Romney Classmate Describes ‘Bullying Supreme’ – A ‘Pack of Dogs’ Who Targeted ‘Different’ Boy

A high school classmate of presidential candidate Mitt Romney told ABC News today that he considers a particular prank the two pulled at Michigan’s Cranbrook School to be “assault and battery” and that he witnessed Romney hold the scissors to cut the hair of a student who was being physically pinned to the ground by several others.

“It’s a haunting memory. I think it was for everybody that spoke up about it… because when you see somebody who is simply different taken down that way and is terrified and you see that look in their eye you never forget it. And that was what we all walked away with,” said Phillip Maxwell, who is now an attorney and still considers Romney an old friend.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” said Maxwell, of the anecdote first reported by the Washington Post. Maxwell said Romney held the scissors helping to cut the hair of a student, John Lauber, who was presumed to be gay and who had long hair. “It was a hack job… clumps of hair taken off.”

Maxwell said he held the boy’s arm and leg, describing he and his friends as a “pack of dogs.”

Asked if Lauber was targeted because he was gay, as reported by the Post, Maxwell said, “We didn’t know that word in those days… but there were other words that were used. We weren’t ignorant, we just didn’t use the current names for things.

Romney has since apologized for what he said were “pranks” in high school but has said he doesn’t remember this specific event. He added that “homosexuality was the furthest thing from his mind” when it came to the jokes he played on classmates. He laughed off the 45-year-old anecdotes during the radio interview today.

Asked if he has any doubt that what Romney did could be considered bullying, Maxwell responded, “Oh my god, are you kidding?… I castigated myself regularly for not having intervened. I would have felt a lot better about myself had I said hey, enough.”

“When I saw the look on his (Lauber’s) face, it was a look I’ll never forget,” said Maxwell. “When you see a victim, the sense of trust betrayed in this boy who was perfectly innocent for being different.”

“This was bullying supreme,” he said.

Maxwell told ABC News that he is a registered independent, generally votes for Democrats, but has voted Republican in the past. He said he would have voted for Romney’s father, George Romney, had he won the presidential nomination. He says he has not donated to President Obama, nor has he volunteered for him.

Maxwell said he believes the incident had to have some effect on Romney.

“I grew up with him. We were best friends in elementary school. We always remained friends. Mitt is wonderful, very bright, an enormously energetic human being… a friend all my life, but this was a side of him that I hadn’t seen,” said Maxwell.

Maxwell added that he believes this is relevant in a Presidential campaign because it speaks to the “character” of Romney.

In response to the Post story, the Romney campaign today released statements of two other students who attended Cranbrook with Romney.

“Mitt was a thoughtful guy with a great sense of humor who cared about his classmates. He had a good perspective on how to balance all the pressures high school students face. He would never go out and do anything mean spirited. Clownish, yes. Never mean,” said Richard Moon, a classmate of Romney’s.

“Mitt never had a malicious bone in his body – trying to imply or characterize him as a bully is absurd.” said John French, another Cranbrook classmate.

Former Romney Classmate Describes ‘Bullying Supreme’ – A ‘Pack of Dogs’ Who Targeted ‘Different’ Boy - ABC News

RELATED

Flashback: Obama’s Sordid High School Past

Flashback: Obama

WASHINGTON POST ANTI-ROMNEY HIT PIECE IMPLODES
May 11, 2012



Today’s unconscionable Washington Post story, which implied without evidence that Mitt Romney was a homophobic bully to one John Lauber back in his high school days five decades ago, has totally imploded.

Timed to drop the day after President Obama’s announced embrace of same-sex marriage, the story set the political world atwitter. But earlier today, Breitbart News reported that the Post had inflated witness testimony.

The original Washington Post piece stated the following:
“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and has long been bothered by the Lauber incident.

Yet in an interview with ABC News today, White disowned that characterization:
While the Post reports White as having “long been bothered” by the haircutting incident,” he told ABC News he was not present for the prank, in which Romney is said to have forcefully cut a student’s long hair and was not aware of it until this year when he was contacted by the Washington Post.
White didn’t know about the incident until this year, but the Post reported that he had “long been bothered” by it. We demanded a correction.
So the Washington Post did what no reputable newspaper should ever do when caught falsifying testimony: it made a stealth correction to its own article.

The article now reads:
“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and said he has been “disturbed” by the Lauber incident since hearing about it several weeks ago, before being contacted by The Washington Post. “But I was not the brunt of any of his pranks.”

The Post did not note that it had made any correction to the article.

It was irresponsible of the Post to run the hit piece in the first place, especially given its obvious bias; to retract a critical phrase and replace it without noting the retraction is just as bad.

But it gets worse.

Tonight, Christine Lauber, John Lauber’s sister, said that she didn’t know anything about the bullying incident. More importantly, she said that the story had factual inaccuracies.

Betsy Lauber, another of John’s sisters, told ABC News, “The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda. There will be no more comments from the family.”Said Christine, “If he were alive today, he would be furious [about the story].”


Jason Horowitz, the reporter on the Post story, did speak to both sisters and quoted them in the story – but apparently still botched the facts.

The Post piece implies that the Romney incident was somehow the beginning of the end for Lauber:
Sometime in the mid-1990s, David Seed noticed a familiar face at the end of a bar at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

“Hey, you’re John Lauber,” Seed recalled saying at the start of a brief conversation. Seed, also among those who witnessed the Romney-led incident, had gone on to a career as a teacher and principal. Now he had something to get off his chest.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to help in the situation,” he said.

Lauber paused, then responded, “It was horrible.” He went on to explain how frightened he was during the incident, and acknowledged to Seed, “It’s something I have thought about a lot since then.”


Lauber died in 2004, according to his three sisters.


But Lauber, at least according to his obituary in the South Bend Tribune, led an incredibly full life. He graduated from Vanderbilt, became a member of the British Horse Society, had his seaman papers, was a licensed mortician in three states and head chef at the Russian River Resort in California, and even served as a civilian contractor to the troops in Iraq. This does not sound like someone crippled by a supposedly crucial incident back in high school.


<i>Washington Post</i> Romney Hit Piece Implodes

Bullying Story Sidetracks Romney's Campaign

Mitt Romney Admits to Teenage 'Pranks'

By MATT NEGRIN (@MattNegrin)
May 11, 2012

Mitt Romney is struggling to get beyond a story about the time he bullied a gay student at a boarding school four decades ago.

The story, reported by the Washington Post, gained traction and credibility as Romney's high school friends spoke on the record to corroborate the account of the candidate as a teenager cutting a gay student's hair while he was pinned to the ground.

"I saw it with my own eyes," Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer who was Romeny's high school pal at the elite Cranbrook School in Michigan, told ABC News. "It was a hack job ... clumps of hair taken off."

Romney said in interviews on Thursday that he didn't remember cutting off John Lauber's hair while the student cried. He laughed off questions about it but also apologized for "dumb things" he did in high school and claimed that "homosexuality was the furthest thing from his mind."

Republicans have questioned the timing of the Post's story, which was published the day after President Obama said in an interview with ABC News that he thought gays should be allowed to marry one another. Christine Lauber, the older sister of the bullied student, John Lauber, who died in 2004, told ABC News that she spoke with the Post last weekend for its story.

She also said that she had "no knowledge" of what happened at Cranbrook, because she was in college at the time. The Lauber family has said it won't comment beyond a statement saying that "the portrayal" of Lauber is "factually incorrect."

"When I saw the look on his face, it was a look I'll never forget," Maxwell said. "This was bullying supreme."

Romney's campaign and even his wife have countered criticism of him as a stiff candidate by saying he has a prankster side. But Thursday night, the campaign published statements from two of Romney's Cranbrook classmates who said the Republican has a sense of humor but isn't mean.

Democrats have been delighted by the way the story has played out, circulating news clippings to reporters and highlighting the most damning quotes aimed at Romney, such as Maxwell calling the bullying "vicious."

Romney is scheduled to give four interviews with news stations in North Carolina on Friday.

Bullying Story Sidetracks Romney's Campaign - ABC News

Obama Describes Bullying Female Classmate Because She Was Black
Posted on May 11, 2012 by Conservative Byte





According to the Washington Post’s cranky lib Greg Sargent, Romeny’s bullying 50 years ago is “fair game,” so I’m guessing he will say the same thing about Obama? Yeah, maybe not.

Video at link below excerpt from "Dreams of my Father"


Obama Describes Bullying Female Classmate Because She Was Black | Conservative Byte

RELATED

Flashback: Obama’s Sordid High School Past

Flashback: Obama

Originally Posted by kathyet

Obama Describes Bullying Female Classmate Because She Was Black
Posted on May 11, 2012 by Conservative Byte





According to the Washington Post’s cranky lib Greg Sargent, Romeny’s bullying 50 years ago is “fair game,” so I’m guessing he will say the same thing about Obama? Yeah, maybe not.

Video at link below excerpt from "Dreams of my Father"


Obama Describes Bullying Female Classmate Because She Was Black | Conservative Byte

Didn't Obama admit it in his own book? Only thing I've heard come out of Mittens is "Uhh... I don't remember the incident... but I'm sorry for anyone I may have hurt". So you're sorry about something you don't remember?? Every day it becomes clear the Republicans screwed up in picking this liar to run against arguably the weakest sitting President in history. This country is so screwed.

I don't think that Maxwell has an agenda, but after reading this article I am a little skeptical.

This is an excerpt from the Automobile I only included the part with the quotes from good old Maxwell..........
Mitt Romney

---

From our June, 2012 issue / By David Murray / Illustration by Aaron Thomas Roth


She told him to ask his father, who sat him down for a straight 1950s talking-to. "Look, son," he said. "Size doesn't always indicate strength, popularity doesn't always indicate truth, and sales volume doesn't always indicate value. And right will always prevail." Mitt drank it in like Vernors ginger ale. "Mitt was like his father's shadow," says Maxwell, a friend from third grade through high school.

At the Romneys' dinner table, Maxwell remembers George engaging him and Mitt in adult debates about cars when they were ten years old. "George took miles per hour, and we took the other side -- miles per gallon," he says. Maxwell was astonished that the Great Man was soliciting his opinion, but he notes that Mitt seemed used to having his green ideas considered. "I loved old George," Maxwell says.


So Mitt Romney grew up in the loving lap of a car executive who would become governor of Michigan before making a run at the presidency of the United States. As you walk around the lush campus of Cranbrook School, you think: Of course Mitt Romney is running for president. What else was he supposed to do? Why, then, after his failed 2008 presidential bid and before the 2012 one that he was surely contemplating -- did Romney go out of his way to call for GM and Chrysler to be allowed to go bankrupt in the midst of a cratering U.S. economy? Why piss off Michigan? Romney isn't saying -- his campaign didn't respond to requests for an interview -- and everyone else has a different answer.

"I was shocked" at the Times op-ed, says Meyers, who now teaches business at the University of Michigan. "It was the talk of someone who didn't understand the forces at work." Theoretically, Meyers approved of Romney's call for the creative destruction of GM and Chrysler, but had they gone into bankruptcy at that time, the beleaguered banks wouldn't have helped them through. "You would have seen tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of people thrown into the street," Meyers says. Others see Romney's call for Big Three bankruptcy as consistent with his small-government political philosophy and a product of his career at Bain Capital, evaluating companies in an unsentimental way. "The thing about Mitt is that he's so much smarter than George," says Schaefer.


Or perhaps the Romneys' outsider status in Detroit actually motivated him to slam some fingers in the car door. Although Meyers thinks the Romneys didn't care enough about Detroit to feel antagonistic beyond "disdain for the car industry and the Big Three," Chapin says the Times op-ed sounded like an outgrowth of many conversations between son and father about "those screwups in Detroit." Romney's schoolmates -- even those who resented his bankruptcy stance and disagree with his politics -- remember him fondly and praise his character. "I'm a Democrat, so I won't vote for him," says Maxwell. "But he'd probably make a pretty good president. He's very smart, very principled."

Read more: "I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit." - Mitt Romney - Automobile Magazine

A well orchestrated attack from the Obamamedia, The Wahington Post, and the Democratic National Committee. This is so contrived..twitter hazing - give me a break. JMO

Democrats pounce on story of ‘vicious' young Romney bullying student
By Olivier Knox
May 10, 2012
President Barack Obama's campaign and the Democratic National Committee pounced Thursday on a Washington Post report describing a "vicious" attack Mitt Romney carried out in 1965 on a fellow prep schooler who years later came out as gay.

The Post, citing five people who attended the elite Cranbrook School in Michigan with Romney, said he had led a "posse" of fellow students against another student named John Lauber, who the newspaper said "was perpetually teased for his noncomformity and presumed homosexuality." The group reportedly pinned Lauber down while Romney forcibly cut his hair.

"It was a hack job," Phillip Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred and is now a lawyer, told the Post. "It was vicious."

The timing of the piece, which says Lauber "came out as gay to his family and close friends" years later, could scarcely have been better for Democrats, coming one day after Obama threw his support behind gay marriage. Obama and his top aides have repeatedly slammed Romney over his opposition to same-sex marriage and painted him as a force for discrimination.

The DNC quickly blasted out an email with the Washington Post article under the subject line "It was vicious" and, in case anyone missed the point, a one sentence introduction: " Key Point: "It was vicious."

DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse kept up the onslaught on Twitter, saying "The nominee of @GOP for president led a 'posse' in a 'vicious' assault on a kid for the way he looked. @MittRomney was an 18yr old adult."

Deputy Obama campaign manager Stephanie Cutter replied to Woodhouse on Twitter: ". @woodhouseb @gop @mittromney Just the qualities you want in someone who wants to be the leader of the free world."

Romney himself apologized in a radio interview on Thursday.

"Back in high school, I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended by that, obviously I apologize," he said in an interview on the "Kilmeade and Friends" talk show on Fox News radio. That the student might have been gay "was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s." But "if I did stupid things, why I'm afraid I got to say sorry for it."http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/democrats-pounce-story-vicious-young-romney-bullying-student/story?id=16320525#.T62VE1Li6So