The WaPo goes macaca over Romney the homophobic bully
The WaPo has trouble getting its Romney-the-wicked-and-abusive-gay-bashing-haircutter story straight. A source it quoted in the WaPo story as having “long been bothered by the…incident” said in an ABC interview the next day that he was not present when it happened and didn’t know about it until he was informed of it this year by the WaPo.
Well, I guess a couple of months (or weeks? or days?) can seem a long time when you’re deeply, deeply troubled by something.
Big Journalism writes that there’s more: the WaPo has done a stealth correction on its original piece at its website, eliminating the incorrect assertion without owning up to the change. Not proper journalistic standards, but then the whole piece isn’t up to proper journalistic standards, which are rarely honored any more so who cares?
And two sisters of the supposedly harassed fellow-student of Romney’s in question, John Lauber, have denied knowledge of the story and issued this statement:
“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 [his sister] Christine, “If he were alive today, he would be furious [about the story].”
Ah, but he’s not alive today, which makes him the perfect victim for the WaPo’s purposes. And the disclaimers won’t matter to those who already support Obama, and maybe some others, too, who won’t necessarily get word of the corrections, as the WaPo is no doubt fully aware.
Allahpundit says what I was thinking:
I thought we were going to spend the next six months having a dumb conversation about whether Romney’s too rich and square and “out of touch” to get the economy back on track. But no, between this and the mind-numbingly stupid Seamus attacks, we’re actually going to have a dumb conversation about whether Romney was some sort of psycho several decades ago.
What’s next?
[NOTE: for those with short memories, the title of my post refers to this.
And yes, of course, the contrast with the lack of interest in Obama’s school days—except those facts that support the preferred narrative—is profound. But that’s to be expected.
And by the way, while we’re at it, that the original allegations have anything to do with actually being gay is preposterous. I was around in the mid-60s, when boys with long hair (such as my very heterosexual first boyfriend, for example) were routinely taunted as looking like “girls” without there being any particularly deep gay sub-context.]
As someone else pointed out on another blog, where oh where is the Washington Post’s 5000 word opus on Barack Obama’s cocaine use? Where is there any hint that they have an interest in exploring any part of his past, even at this late date, let alone before the 2008 election? We know less about this sitting president than we know about either Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney both, to this point, only candidates. (Of course, the essential point is that they are Republican candidates. Nuff said.)
There is no more obvious evidence of MSM bias than this non-story being blown up into a Big F****n’ deal. Indeed, coupling this story with the fawning coverage of Obama’s “courageous, evolved” position on gay marriage, is even more outrageous. The MSM is so deeply tied to the democrats no thinking person should ever trust a word they say. Yet they do. It is to weep.
Cocaine use? Troubling but small potatoes. Why is it no big deal that he was associated with Ayers and Dohern who were on the FBI ten most wanted list for running a domestic terrorist oganization that murdered people?
I was in high school in the late 70’s Nobody ever mentioned that someone might be gay. In retrospect I think some people may have been, but the ones who probably were often admired for their creativity and humor.
So what if the WaPo has documentary proof, from an unimpeachable source, that Romney got out of the Texas Air National Guard.
What? Oh, wrong smear. Sorry. So hard to keep them straight.
Please pardon my sarcasm-type thoughts but…oh yes, most of the Obama Democrats + the press MUST punish + look down on Romney teasing someone + cutting their hair, WHICH IS an event, or bullying, that no one can prove has happened, anyway.
They scold Romney for not being A TOTALLY MATURE ADULT, at 16, 17 or 18, and also in high school. Most high school kids I’ve met have made a handful of really dumb decisions, before the age of 26.
But…just because she has the one saving grace of being a democrat, they say that JANE Fonda was just “too young to know not to do those bad things”, like travel to the country of our enemy, in the Vietnam War, and 1) say that the U.S. prisoners of war were lying about being tortured and starved by North Vietnam’s soldiers and 2) that the U.S. soldiers were all like Nazis and the U.S. soldiers were just as bad as the war criminals + torturers, that were in [WWII’s Nazi soldiers and some of the WWII Imperial Japanese Army’s soldiers].
And, as some of the Obama Democrats say, we must for give her for all of this…she had no idea that any of this was wrong or harmful…she was too young to know that these actions were bad…WHEN SHE WAS 35!
Most people I know, are expected to act like adults at 35.
But gosh, good old J. Fonda is a big old hero in 2012. So what’s the lie we’re supposed to believe? Something like: evil pixies locked Jane in a castle from 16-35, so she was never taught right from wrong, or not to slander, from 16 to 35? Is that correct?
Please get real, main stream press and main stream media.
If Jane Fonda had been accused, at 65, (and Romney is 65), of doing an [alleged hair-related screw up] in her teen years, you MSM people and press would say:
[oh goodness, goodness. That was just Janey, being a sweet, little, naive, spirited girl, playing with her school chums! Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho. How amusing]!
If you allow Jane Fonda to have a free pass at 35-years-old, You certainly have to give Romney a free pass to have one dumb day, in his life, at the age of 16 or 18. 16 through 18 is when most teens are really bad at making good choices. Not giving both of these people a break, is a double standard, in my view.
And, once again, [this teen event], that Romney is accused of, is still only an unproven accusation.
No one has proven, as of yet, that this event has ever happened, or that the accusers are telling us the truth, about this event.
I find it amazing that the reporter can find out what Romney did and thought in high school 50 years ago but no reporter can find out what Obama did in college 20 years ago.
Exactly, Ray. A near 50 yr old hazing incident is covered in detail, including quotes from Romney’s class mates and family of the victim, but the only concrete thing I’ve seen about Obama’s life in law school is the video of hos intro for Prof. Bell at a rally uncovered by Breitbart. Nothing tangible from his tenure on Law Review, no details about his classes or activities at Columbia or Occidental (including a jaunt to Pakistan). No recollections from classmates, professors, roomates, girlfriends (until recently). Nada, zip, zilch.
* GWB released his service records; Kerry never did.
* McCain released thousands of pages of medical records; Obama provided a 2 page summary from his doctor.
*Palin’s email as Governor are scoured by the media & crowdsourced; Obama has never produced any paperwork from his tenure as State Senator (never filed it, apparently, so it was shredded or it’s sitting in boxes somewhere)
The more I think about this, the more it’s bs. I graduated from high school in 1965, just like Mitt. I went to a public high school and we had a dress code, as did all the public schools. Pressed pants, clean shirt, and a heat haircut for the boys, skirts and blouses for the girls with no outrageous hairdos, .i.e., extreme boufants in those days. No boy could have gotten past the principal with a long ponytail. He’d have been sent home or sent to the PE department where the gym teachers would have cut it off. Otherwise the tougher kids would have beaten the bleep out of him after school. He’d have wished they would just tease him.
The other problem with this is that really long hair for guys didn’t really become fashionable until the Viet Nam protests were in full force about 1967.
The reporter should get his anachronisms straight.
Another meme the MSM is promoting is Romney’s turn to the right during his campaign for the Republican nomination. No facts, activities, or statements are mentioned to prove the assertion. It’s just ipse dixit. I’m trying to remember anything Romney said or did which could be categorized as a turn to the right, and my memory serves to tell me he did nothing of the sort for which I gave him at least that credit. Now, the MSM claims Romney is turning to the middle. What a flip flopper this guy is! huh.
How’s the price of gas?
What are the unemployment numbers? What’s the size of the labor force?
First, WaPo is in cahoots with Obama. This story was spoon fed to WaPo. Bet on it.
Second, to younger voters, Dem voters, and some moderate voters: it does not register that the 1960s were a different cultural vibe, i.e. that long haired boys were taunted as “girls”, and there was no homosexual undercurrent to the taunt.
One of the consistent aspects of modern politically correct scorning … is to take statements which, in their bygone cultures, were innocuous … and to judge those statements according to modern day pc morays … and to thus judge the speakers of the bygone statements to have been racists/sexists/homophobes, during their eras, according to cultural standards which did not exist during their eras. This is done all the time. The people who do it … are ignorant of history, and thus do not understand why they are drawing an unreasonable conclusion.
Third, I see a pattern of political attack:
A. Identify (possibly via focus group) a negative characteristic which potential voters notice in a candidate.
B. Create a hit job which is focused on this perceived negative characteristic. It does not matter whether or not the purported evidence is credible. Whatever the status of the “evidence”, the hit job will work, b/c the hit job taps into voters instincts about the candidate.
This is how we were treated to a rumored Alaskan waitress who overheard Sarah Palin making a racial slur. A total lie. Yet, the hit contributed to alienating moderate voters, b/c it played into their instincts about Palin: voters had an instinct that anyone with her accent, and with her background and education, must be racist.
This is also how we had the hit on Rick Perry re the racist rock at a hunting lease. Again, it did not matter that the “evidence” was misrepresented. The hit worked, b/c it played into voters instincts about anyone with Rick Perry’s accent and Rick Perry’s background.
Therefore, I believe this unfair hit on Romney will hurt Romney. It plays into voters instincts. I believe voters instinctively perceive that Romney is a bully … b/c I perceive that Romney is a bully (based on observed behavior during debates and during interviews – said behavior being one reason I dislike Romney). It does not matter that the hit is unfair and dubious and spoon fed to WaPo: the hit will do some damage, and the damage will linger.
The good news: Romney still wins. Decisively. Put a smile on your face: these are good days for conservatives.
I just noticed a pattern: find the voter perception, hit you opponent on that voter perception. It does not matter if your “evidence” is trumped up horse manure.
It is not only sad because the “news media” isn’t doing its proper neutral job; but, it is disturbing because the “victim” isn’t alive to speak on his behalf. Can’t they leave the dead in peace? (rhetorical question)
Kudos to his family for trying to speak up.
Like neo I am a “changer” – I didn’t vote for a Republican presidential candidate until 2004 and I’m probably still “RINO”-ish compared to a lot of the posters I encounter on right-wing blogs. But there is one topic on which I am more rabid than Rush, Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter combined – the MSM. This is just another example of how far they have descended into partisanship and dishonesty. As neo points out it has already been established that the story lied and one of the alleged participants did not even know it happened until recently.
It is similar to the situation with the Zimmerman-Martin case. The fact that NBC edited the audio to cast Zimmerman in a bad light doesn’t automatically exonerate him but it does convict NBC of cynical, dishonest agenda-mongering. In fact, a large number of the topical discussions on right-wing blogs are really about the MSM because what usually happens is that either a small incident making a Republican look bad is greatly exaggerated (dog on Romney’s car) or a huge incident that makes the Democrats look bad is studiously ignored (Fast and Furious). I think people are finally starting to see through this, as shown by the dwindling finances of the major media outlets, but it is still a thumb on the scale of national politics, especially Presidential elections.
One last addendum to my previous comment – while the media has been biased for a long time, it has gotten dramatically worse since the emergence of Obama on the national scene which has amplified their worst tendencies in both leftism and identity politics.
Yep, hazing a bleached haired boyo in High School nearly 50-years ago….and, say….20-years of taking the ‘Liberation Theology-America Hating Blather from Spiritual Advisor, Rev.Jeremiaaahhhh, in ADULTHOOD… But, at least the drooling lapdog media punks went after one…ohhhh…my…Gawd.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how much of that high school Romney hit piece is made up or exaggerated or distorted or the worst kind of cynical partisan pseudo-journalism. What matters is the extent to which the meme is picked up and used by SNL, talk show comedians, etc.
That’s how it will reach the low-info voters it’s meant for. Something like this doesn’t much affect people informed about politics, e.g. anyone who reads the actual Washington Post article: they’re not basing their votes for or against Romney or Obama on this trifle.
But the people who hear of this not from the news, but from the “Romney as bully” sketches and jokes– they’re the susceptible audience.
We know the drill: it’s what they did to Palin in 2008.
But I take heart: the Romney campaign is not the McCain campaign. Romney is likely to get some of the benefit that Palin (ironically) got from her laceration by the media qua Obama propaganda arm: it rallies conservatives to him, who’ll root not just for Obama’s defeat but the Obamedia’s comeuppance. And since Romney’s not using McCain’s playbook, I don’t think the Obama-MSM tag team will be as successful in defining Romney (in a way that affects votes) as they were in caricaturing Palin. But oh, they’ll try their best.
IMO Romney will succeed more than McCain (since McCain didn’t even try) in getting even independents and moderate Dems to see this White House-media collusion for what it is. Romney defined all this stuff in advance (and continues to frame it) as “distraction” from Obama’s record and the economy; the media is going all out to prove him right.
It’s still the economy. And (god, let’s hope) we’re not stupid.
It does seem to me like any teenage boy who shows up at an early-60s boys’ prep school trying to look like Veronica Lake is leading with the chin, or something like it.
All this off-topic noise is beyond belief. And Hussein’s druggy dropout lifestyle, self-confessed, is of course ignored.
And I think Romney is going to have to do more than label the Lickspittle Media as a “distraction”; he will have to put it across that they are the Left’s toadies, who “report” on the Left’s opponents with unalloyed malice.
Because they will continue to attack him like jackals going after their prey: they gang up and bite the victim in the hindquarters while their confederates distract the victim by lunging at him from the front, always staying just out of reach. Finally, the prey’s hindquarters, gashed and bleeding, give way, and the animal collapses — to be swarmed and torn to pieces by the jackals, who have never ONCE closed with the victim fang-to-fang.
Honor? Courage? Straight-dealing? Forget it.
Beverly, agreed. Romney has referred half-jokingly to the MSM “left-wing conspiracy”; I think he’s aware of what he’s going to be up against. As opposed to McCain, who was blindsided and remained willfully blind.
If all they can get are dogs on car carriers on car roofs, and this non story about a possibly gay but no one knows bullying incident, they’re running low in ammo. And even IF they find a real meaty (excluding dog) hit piece to use before Nov, the Press will have already lost their credibility.
Anyone speak to Obama’s high school classmates yet?
neo-neocon,
Yesterday Althouse had a post about the Romney-the-bully story, comparing it to a bullying episode from O’s memoirs, and mused on what these episodes (taken at face value) suggest about “leadership” vs. “following” in these boys who would become Romney and Obama.
I was reminded of this post by you, in particular this bit from a NYT article on Romney’s years at Harvard Business School:
Mr. Romney recruited a murderers’ row of some of the most distinguished students in the class. “He and I said, hey, let’s handpick some superstars,” said Howard Serkin, a classmate…
Mr. Romney served as a kind of team captain, the other members said, pushing and motivating the others.
“He wanted to make straight A’s,” Mr. Serkin said. “He wanted our study group to be No. 1.” Sometimes Mr. Romney arrived early to run his numbers a few extra times. And if his partners were not prepared, “he was not afraid of saying: ‘You’re letting us down. We want to be the best,’ ” Mr. Serkin added…
Mr. Romney was in his element. His class performances were outstanding; his peers described him as precise, convincing and charismatic. He won the high grades he craved…If Mr. Romney melded with the school intellectually, he kept some distance from it socially. He was married and a parent. In the liberal precincts of Cambridge, he and his wife, Ann Romney – pictured wearing matching sweaters at a fall 1973 business school clambake, with their two sons on their laps – seemed like they were from “out on the prairies,” Mr. Brownstein said.
The future governor abstained from things many other students were doing: drinking coffee or alcohol, swearing, smoking…
What a bully! Here’s hoping Romney recruits a “murderers’ row” for his administration– and is just as effective and exacting a leader/ bully with them.
A marked contrast to “leading from behind.” Note the difference between someone who applies pressure on his peers (as a leader) yet is unaffected by peer pressure himself (Romney felt no need to “fit in” with the Cambridge crowd), and someone whose entire life story is in a way haunted by the quest to “fit in.”
After all, weren’t the “gutsy calls” of (1) ordering the bin Laden kill and (2) belatedly stating “personal” support for SSM, instances of acceding to peer pressure? And then taking credit for leadership. Cf. following Sarkozy– I mean, er “leading from behind”– on Libya. Letting Pelosi et al draft Obamacare. Etc.
Over at Powerline, Paul Miregoff posts some excerpts from The Real Romney that are a good counter to the Obama propaganda. The contrast with Obama is striking. Can you imagine Obama entering a burning house to save his neighbor’s belongings? On the other hand, I can imagine Obama appointing a committee to regulate such activities. They would probably recommend that only licensed sofa movers are permitted to intervene.
BTW, The Real Romney is a pretty balanced look at him.
In answer to where we’re going with this, here’s an article from Yahoo today, which works the word “swastiki” into the narrative.
Unfortunately, Rachel hits the nail squarely. The usual line up of late night hacks will have their fun with this, and a significant percentage of “independent” voters, those who get their news from those fonts of wisdom, will have a new label for Romney.
If I knew the solution to this conundrum of the ignorant, I should say misinformed, voter I would package it and sell it.
Last night our local Fox channel (Almost as left as ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, etc) ran a short news segment in which they reported that Romney had a “meltdown” over a reporter’s questions about medical marijuana. The screen shot included about 20 seconds of Romney asking if the reporter didn’t have some more important questions to ask. Here’s a short story about it and video of the entire interview:
http://tinyurl.com/7hglrxe
Hardly a meltdown, IMO. The meme is that Romney is evasive and won’t answer legitimate questions when he tries to steer the conversation away from social issues and toward the economy. It’s a heads, they win and tails, he loses strategy.
Mike McNally at the PJ Tatler has a good article up about this issue. He makes the analogy that Obama and company are fire bombing the forest with social issues hoping the Republicans keep rushing around to put out the little fires and ignore the major issues of the economy and Obama’s record. He avers, “As the campaign takes shape, each time the Democrats attempt to bring up social issues Romney should politely explain that he would rather not waste time talking about matters that Americans will inevitably disagree on, and which cannot be quickly or easily resolved by the President or Congress; and that he would prefer to focus on the subjects that are of pressing concern to every American — the economy and jobs, and Obama’s utter failure on both counts.”
That was what Romney did in that interview in the above linked video, but with the media pushing the narrative that he is “melting down, uncooperative, angry, etc.,” they are trying to paint a picture of him as an uncooperative bully.
Read McNally’s piece here: http://tinyurl.com/7ekjfsv
“Anyone speak to Obama’s high school classmates yet?”
I used to work with someone who went to Punahou at the same time. According to this person, “Barry was one of the stoners!”, not that that is exactly a stunning revelation at this point.
In 1995, the Walt Disney Company made a film, titled: A Goofy Movie. [It is a fiction movie].
In it, a high school boy calls two other boys: “ladies”.
So, If we follow the Democrat-leaning reporters’ rules:
1) Mitt Romney, a high school kid, calling boys- “Atta girl” = you dislike gay people.
and
2) A boy in a Disney movie calling some boys- “Ladies” = you dislike gay people.
So, main stream media’s reporters, Do the Disney movie makers, and the Walt Disney Company, dislike gay people?
In their movie, Did the Disney people insult gay people?
Your argument seems to say so.