Written in reaction to this article on Huffington Post and Mitt Romney’s response to accusations he bullied a closeted gay student in prep school.
Friends, you can vote for whoever you like, or even not vote, so long as you believe in it. I’m cool with that. And though I know this will seem like I am trying to tell you how to vote, you’re just going to have to believe me when I say that I’m really not. Please, vote for whoever you believe will take care of you and the issues you care about.
But I think Mitt Romney is a poor human being.
It’s all there in his “apology.”
“They talk about the fact that I played a lot of pranks in high school,” Romney said. “And they describe some that you just say to yourself, back in high school I just did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended by it, obviously I apologize … The people involved didn’t come out of the closet until years later. The idea that this is something that was known by me … is obviously absurd. I had no idea that this person might have been gay.”
I think he is a bully. The truest kind of bully. The kind who is incapable of even understanding he is one, proudly defiant in his refusal to even entertain the notion. He “just did some dumb things.” Gosh, if some of the victims of those “hijinks and pranks” that “might have gone too far” were somehow hurt or offended by them, well, of course he’s sorry. That they were hurt or offended. Not that he did them, of course, because he was just joking around, after all. He was like the class clown, you know? Always cutting up, making people laugh, he didn’t mean anything by it, hell, after all, “as to pranks that were played back then, I don’t remember them all.” And it certainly wasn’t homophobic, because he “had no idea that this person might have been gay.”
As if, had the victim NOT been gay, well, that’d be okay.
For bullies they’re always just “pranks.” They call it a prank because they’re incapable of empathy for others, which is why Romney STILL just calls them pranks. He uses that word repeatedly in his statement. He’s oblivious to the idea that if something doesn’t make HIM suffer then no one else could possibly be suffering. And that mentality shows in nearly every public example we have of the man, from tying his dog to the top of his car, to his career at Bain Capital, to “I’m not concerned with the very poor. We have a safety net there.”
He’s not feeling any pain, therefore pain does not exist.
I am trying to be a better person. I am trying to not be someone who judges others. But I don’t always succeed. And I think Mitt Romney is a poor human being.
And I will be glad to see him lose.
A couple of weeks or so back, I wrote a diatribe about bullies, having been mercilessly bullied myself (for being overweight, being smart, liking nerdy things, loving all the wrong music – like ELO, etc etc etc). I admire the hell out of you for getting behind this bully issue and the threat of a bully taking over the White House. I personally believe the Right Wing are comprised of nothing but corporate and religious bullies. And I cannot abide that. All in all, politics is a dodgy thing on either side of the coin; however, when a candidate is outed as being a tormentor of other humans for being different, what does that say about how he’d run the country. Intolerance and the abuse that comes with it is a grievous flaw in humanity.
Thanks, Tracy, and I say good for you, as well! You wouldn’t think saying something so self-evident as “bullies are bad” would need to be so surprising…
It’s all of a piece, isn’t it? This story, and making fun of the cheap ponchos the NASCAR fans are wearing, and Seamus the dog, and ridiculing the local bakery’s cookies. It’s like the guy can’t help it. He’s the modern Milton Armitage.
Leonard gets +5 for the random Dobie Gillis reference!
Paul – you are completely right on this. Romney is clueless. I say we bully him at the polls.
Thanks, Michael!