Sure, you may know which man --
Mitt Romney or
Barack Obama -- you want to see running the country, but which one would you have wanted to know in high school?
We
learned four years ago that young Barack was a laid-back, not overly
studious kid who loved basketball and occasionally smoked a little weed.
The kids at Punahou, the prestigious Honolulu prep school Obama
attended, never expected their amiable but seemingly unmotivated
classmate to one day become the most powerful man on the planet.
At Cranbrook, the Michigan
boarding school Romney attended, there could well have been those who
thought young Mitt might amount to something someday. His dad, after
all, was governor and was being touted as a candidate for president. But
if you were a certain type of student at Cranbrook back in 1965, the
idea of Mitt Romney getting any kind of power over people would have
been frightening.
A story in the
Washington Post
based on interviews with several of Romney’s fellow students alleges
that young Mitt was a bullying rich kid who had it in for boys who were
too different.
One boy, in particular, caught Romney’s attention
-- a shy, new kid at the school named John Lauber who had bleached blond
bangs that dipped across one eye. According to those interviewed, young
Mitt was bugged by Lauber's hair. "He can’t look like that," Romney
reportedly told one of his friends. "That’s wrong. Just look at him!"
Romney
pulled together a pack of boys and went to Lauber's room, where they
tackled him and pinned him down. As Lauber, with tears streaming down
his cheeks, screamed for help, Romney pulled out scissors and chopped
away at the kid’s hair.
That was the worst, but not the only of
Romney's bullying high school pranks, according to the Post. At least
one person suggested young Romney had it in for boys he suspected of
being gay.
After Romney’s campaign spokesperson initially denied
the story, Romney went on Fox Radio to say he did not remember the
incident but that he was sorry about it anyway. "I’m a very different
person than I was in high school, of course, but I’m glad I learned as
much as I did during those high school years," he said in the radio
interview.
Well, I assume he is different, just as Obama is
different from the kid he was. Still, Romney could not seem to suppress a
nervous chuckle as he talked about the bullying episode, just as the
same chuckle erupts when he talks about firing people. It makes a person
wonder if the guy has empathy for people who are different from him,
who have not lived the privileged life he has enjoyed.
The rap on Obama has been that he is a little too cool and aloof. The rap on Romney may be that he is just plain callous.
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