So it seems that Edmund White, author of A Boy’s Own Story, was solicited by the New Yorker for his own “Memories of Cranbrook“:
From what I can gather from the few details that have come out about Romney and his bullying of a student who was perceived as gay (forcefully cutting off his long, bleached-blond hair), a familiar picture emerges. Romney was not a good student nor was he athletic; he was the manager of one of the school teams, a sort of default position for boys who wanted to be athletic and cool and popular—a water boy, in essence. He was considered a class clown, always up to rather cruel pranks. I can picture his situation, though it’s only speculation on my part (I’ve never known any of his friends, though one of his older brothers was a classmate). On the one hand he had an embarrassingly famous father, the governor of Michigan, whom he idolized as the youngest child. On the other he was the sole Mormon, a member of what was definitely seen as a creepy, stigmatized cult in that world of bland Episcopalian Wasps (we had Episcopalian services at chapel three mornings a week). When his father was president of American Motors, he lived at home and was a day student, an envied status. When his father was elected governor and moved to the state capital of Lansing, he became a boarder. Suddenly he was surrounded by other Cranbrook students and the strict “masters,” 24/7. He no longer had the constant support of his tight-knit family. Now he had to win approval from the other boys.
No wonder he became a daring and even violent prankster. He who worried about his own marginal status couldn’t bear the presence of an unapologetic sissy like Lauber, with his long bleached hair (the Mormons, then as now, have insisted on a neat, traditional, conservative appearance, especially in their young missionary men whom they send out all over the world). In scorning and shearing a sissy student and leading a gang of five other boys in this “prank,” Romney may have felt popular and in the right for the first time…
Nicely done, Mr. White. I doubt Willard even felt that dagger.
Corner Stone
OK, calling bullshit here. Just saw on Spike that First Blood is rated as 2 Stars.
Who the fuck gave this movie 2 freakin’ stars?
WTF is wrong here?
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Totally stolen off the GOS: The following is from Romney’s website:
And the inevitable response:
Joseph Nobles
Oh, wow, Anne Laurie, you’re not kidding. That’s professional grade stuff there.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Corner Stone: what are you talking about? Cable boxes are excellent sources for movie ratings.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Man. THAT is a shivving.
Gin & Tonic
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: That blasted Oxford comma.
Cassidy
@Corner Stone: Easily a 4.
RossInDetroit
That’s the kind of takedown you don’t expect a guy to get back up from. So (some of) the long knives are out for Mitt now. I wonder who will step up to defend him. Wait, no I don’t. It’s nobody. Nobody will.
hhex65
That I will be forced to know about Willard between now and November is an outrage.
Merp
This is awwwwweeeeeeesome
Citizen_X
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: Doesn’t dressing your family come after hunting and shooting them?
Note: that’s different from dressahjj.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@RossInDetroit: If I understood the news I was half paying attention to, the campaign made a public plea for anyone from Cranbrook to say something nice about Mitt. Which is pretty pathetic in itself, and from what I’ve seen, no one answered.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Citizen_X: It’s a step beyond putting food on your family.
Corner Stone
Ok. Holy shit. Everybody turn it on to HGTV. There’s a House Hunter’s on where a youth pastor who is so obviously gay it is not even close, and his wife, who may not be able to recognize this easy observation are looking for a house in West By God Virginia!
Corner Stone
Dear Baby Jesus please. I am begging you. Please let other people here see this House Hunters episode.
Please Jesus!!
Jebediah
I am not much of a gearhead nor much of a photographer, neither, and I can prove it. Here are some snaps from today’s Culver City Car Show.
Trooptrap Tripetrope
Mittens may have an even bigger image problem at hand:
BAT BOY TO BE ROMNEY’S VP
David Koch
Romney has a great sense of humor. Here he is reenacting a scene from “The Deer Hunter”
http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/9935/romneygun.jpg
PhoenixRising
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: Eats, shoots and leaves. Like a panda, those Republican candidates.
schrodinger's cat
Baby Bobo’s fee fees are hurt because Obama has been pwning Mittbot. If the punditubbies are crying foul, you must be doing it right.
TuiMel
Who cares what this person thinks? The basic story and Romney’s reaction to it confirms my impression of him as a person without the sort of character I admire – not a person to whom I would give my vote. I think the man shows every day that he is incapable of empathy. I don’t understand how the musings of someone who has never met any of Romney’s friends is worth printing or reprinting. It merely seems gratuitous in a situation where it is not necessary.
Villago Delenda Est
It’s abundantly clear that OvenMitt’s past will come back to dog him. I’m not just talking about Seamus here.
That was a work of art, and this:
Is dead center on target.
Fire for effect!
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Okay, turned over to it. Getting a bit of a gay vibe, but getting more of a clueless vibe. It always amazes me on these shows how people are unable to differentiate between real homebuying issues and ephemera, e.g., complaining about wall colors that can be changed with $50 worth of paint.
ETA: Okay, the wife said something about “Like if we ever have children?” And that did have a bit of a “like that’ll ever happen” vibe to it.
Villago Delenda Est
@David Koch:
OK, what are those two girls shaking hands over?
“Betcha he’s too chickenshit to load the squirtgun with beer”
“I’ll take that bet…because he’s too chickenshit to load it with water.”
Soonergrunt
They’re starting to come out of the woodwork.
The Day I Was Bullied By Romney, by Andrew Ross
schrodinger's cat
Romney seems to be quite unpopular here in Massachusetts, to know him is to dislike him. I did not live here when he was the Governor, so I really have no perspective on why he is despised so much. May be Anne Laurie or someone else can explain this phenomena better.
RossInDetroit
Tomasky on why suddenly people will admit not liking Mitt:
David Koch
@Villago Delenda Est:Here’s rare film of Romney as a kid at a country club
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-jlQS-Wuc0&feature=related
schrodinger's cat
@Soonergrunt: In that photo doesn’t he look like the annoying and obnoxious kid that everyone in their right mind tries to avoid?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@David Koch: For some reason, I knew what that was going to be before I even looked at the video.
Thymezone
The whole Romney story is nothing but a bunch of gossip that would be embarrassing to a bunch of old women. Nobody needs the gossip to know that Mitt Romney is an asshole, every word out of his mouth, every gratuitous wisecrack and $10k bet offer and putdown affirms his true nature. The man is a butthead, even his dog knows it. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the high school pranks.
Gin & Tonic
@Soonergrunt: Sorry, but that piece smells like spoof to me. “Smoking jacket”? Pink ascot?
David Koch
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yup. Romney is gonna lose his home state, the state he was governor of, by 25 pts.
yet the media gives him a pass on this matter. Can you imagine how they would crucify a Democrat under the same circumstance.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Gin & Tonic: and a sixteen year old in 1962 talking about “domestic partnerships”
jurassicpork
Every now and then, I unleash a post I’ve been meaning to write since I began blogging almost seven and a half years ago. The 25 Most Embarrassing States is one of them. Michigan is included largely on the dubious strength of it giving us Mitt Romney. My most vicious (and funniest) post, yet.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: That dude is gay as the day is long. You missed seeing him throw the football.
And to be clear, that’s just fine. But IMO he’s not being honest with himself or his wife. She’s the clueless one.
Narcissus
@Corner Stone: He doesn’t seem that gay.
In any case I bet the cruising scene in St. Albans, WV suck.
Soonergrunt
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah. The ‘witty but not smart’ kid who’s quick with a cutting remark, but his English paper completely misses the point from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The guy who’d give a Freshman a good hard shove into an open locker, but is either “manager” or permanent bench-rider for the football team. The guy who joins the Drama club to meet girls, but doesn’t understand (nor care to understand) any of the messages or meanings in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, or Wilder’s Our Town.
Gex
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They’ll back the money truck up for a couple of guys to pretend they knew him well. The delay is for their “history” to be written up and memorized.
Shawn in ShowMe
@RossInDetroit:
IMO, life was a lot more interesting and cooler before Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. The nation was a lot less obese and kids spent most of their time playing outdoors.
If Romney was a “real Christian” instead of a Mormon, he would had the nomination sewn up a long time ago. Being an awful human being is why WE don’t like him, not why wingnuts don’t like him. Being an awful human being has been synonymous with badass in the Republican party for at least 20 years now.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Okay, I missed the football toss, a well-known tell. And I agree that the wife is definitely clueless. I wonder if actual brain damage is caused by that flat, semi-Valley Girl accent?
RossInDetroit
@jurassicpork:
Thank you for noting our other embarrassment, a governor who dissolves elected city governments and appoints someone to run the place if he considers them in distress. Chins are hitting the floor over that but it’s too late now.
Corner Stone
@Narcissus:
Hence the “youth minister” aspect of the whole deal.
Dun-dun-duhhhhh!!!
Ok, it was really because this was the first show I had seen where someone actually wanted to buy something in WV. The relationship between the two was secondary.
Good luck to them!
Soonergrunt
@Gin & Tonic: It may be, but I don’t think so. There’s nothing on the site to indicate such.
There’s this article from January. I suppose that could go either way, but I’m still leaning to believing the veracity of the site author.
I may be wrong here, but if I am wrong about this one, I still believe that the incidents reported in the original article are not the only ones in which Romney was involved or for which he was responsible. That level of cruelty and viciousness just doesn’t happen as a one-off, so we WILL hear about others.
Hill Dweller
@Gin & Tonic: Same here. It seems like a parody.
freelancer
@Gin & Tonic:
The domestic partnerships line was a little non sequitur, but I jumped ship at:
That’s too cute by half.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah. Threatening to tie him to the top of the family station wagon? The line about “domestic partnerships?”
That’s heavy-duty spoof.
Jewish Steel
Maybe the rest of you are used to to it by now. But since this is only the second NBA game I’ve watched this year, I’m finding the name Metta World Peace an absurd distraction.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@jurassicpork: That picture of Perry really does sum up Texas.
Soonergrunt
@freelancer: So you’re saying I really ought to read through the whole article then?
Yeah.
That was actually pretty good.
I’m going to bed now.
ArchTeryx
@David Koch: Don’t need to. See: Gore, Al.
Gin & Tonic
@Soonergrunt: I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about others. He does seem like That Guy. But what’s way more intriguing to me is how amateurish his current operation is. As has been written about everywhere, if he had shown a scintilla of self-awareness he could have made this thing disappear by yesterday. There were/are many ways to spin this, yet, as per usual, he got it exactly wrong. I keep thinking of Casey Stengel: doesn’t anybody here know how to play this game?
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Fixed that for you.
Okay, now I’ve moved on to House Hunters International. Had to laugh at this classic bit of real-estate speak from the Eurotrash agent:
Oh, thanks, good to know. That was settled by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, right?
Steeplejack
@Jewish Steel:
Especially since he’s a major thug.
Soonergrunt
@Gin & Tonic: That’s the big problem they have. It’s amateur hour in the GOP. A professional operation with a prepared candidate would’ve handled this quickly and efficiently. It reminds me very much of the McCain campaign.
RossInDetroit
I’m off to bed. Don’t forget to be nice to a mom tomorrow. And every day for that matter. It’s not quite a thankless job but there’s never enough thanking to go around.
Cheers.
Mark H
@Gin & Tonic:
…tied to the top of a station wagon.
suzanne
A gay friend of mine who was brought up LDS and has since left the Church commented to me, “I’m not surprised. Mormons were my bullies then and are bullies now.”
Suffern ACE
@Gin & Tonic: Remember, all it takes is for rove to plant one bogus story that can be proven false, then Dan Rather is fired and they all clam up, and everything else is discredited.
Southern Beale
The 100 Digital Shorts thing on SNL just now was hilarious.
So, chillaxing after the big Mothers Day fandango today. Had to do it today because my SIL had the nerve to graduate from college today. Sheesh. Some people.
Yutsano
@RossInDetroit: I’m going to have a nice long talk with my mom then see if my brothers can take her out to dinner. She’s about to be my angel for the next six weeks. I can try to be as nice as possible to her here. :)
Mike in NC
Willard exhibits so many of the same traits as Dubya: a rich, entitled, thin-skinned prick who enjoys bullying and humiliating others not in their social class. The asshole frat boy who never grew up.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suffern ACE:
The problem is, the story on the deserting sack of shit was TRUE. The fact of the matter is, even if the documents were “forgeries” via the kerning, they were authentic in that they accurately replicated the information in the original.
There are many things that he should hang for, but his military record, such as still exists, is the first reason he should hang. Officers set the example. Even if it’s a bad one. That’s rectified by punishing them above and beyond the norm.
Corner Stone
@RossInDetroit:
Just tell her you love her at every opportunity. It’s not that hard.
redshirt
As the newly appointed Patriarch of my entire extended family, I just spent several hours arranging visits to my just in the hospital Aunt.
That I am Patriarch and I must do such things – verily, people ask me to do them – amazes me. How did this happen? Life is some funny shit.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@Corner Stone:
i blame the manarchy.
Suffern ACE
@Soonergrunt: Again. Be careful. Too many of these stories turn out to be fake and the narrative is dropped at the first firing. Unless of course you think gwb actually served his time in the air national guard. This isn’t al gore here who they can just lie about with impunity. Democrats don’t actually control msm careers.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: Yeah, she was kind of a little bit of a bitch. So to speak.
But Americans going to Eurotrash areas never seem to get it. The rooms are small. There is no parking. They cost a cock load.
Face it. We’re a bunch of spoiled, self righteous prigs who think houses everywhere should be 2000sqft minimum.
Corner Stone
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick: Are you a crazy person?!
The reigning Manarchy has First Blood rated as Balls!
Southern Beale
Guess I missed this when it came out the first time but did y’all know that Mitt & Tagg Romney had ties to convicted Ponzi scheme fraudster Allen Stanford?
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: It didn’t get discussed here much, but yeah. Somehow it didn’t seem to get very much traction period. Swiss bank accounts are sexier.
Suffern ACE
@Yutsano: A lot of cool stuff could be found in private equity and family wealth funds.
Yutsano
@Suffern ACE: It’d take digging and research. You know, work. That thing journalists don’t do anymore.
Walker
@Steeplejack:
My wife and I love to mock that show. I am still floored by the Syracuse episode in which not once did heating and energy costs come into the discussion. The old Victorian was bad because it was “dated”, not because it leaked heat like a sieve.
Alison
MY EXCITING SATURDAY NIGHT: About to sneak out to go buy flowers for Mother’s Day. And since I actually never go anywhere, this technically does qualify as “exciting”.
I live with my folks due to illness (mine, not theirs), which makes the purchasing of gifts and such tricky at times. Thankfully they are Olds and go to bed early. Off to Safeway with me :)
freelancer
@Alison:
That’s sweet of you.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, we are spoiled, and I get that regularly from House Hunters International. The couple in this episode was kind of pissed that they couldn’t find a great place in Luxembourg that was exactly like what they had in Manhattan. Go figure.
suzanne
I am at home withthefamily after two of the most exhausting, stressful weeks in recent memory. And I brought a work laptop home so I can have even more fun. The baby is sick, my husband’s car is dead and we’re living on one car for a while, the house is a mess, and I have a deadline on Monday. I need to get laid.
PurpleGirl
I’m so damn tired. So tired. But the ventilation system is making that noise/vibration again and it’s been going on for 5 damned hours and I can’t lie down for hearing/feeling it. I’m in the middle of anxiety attack and just want to bang/hit something and make the damned noise stop.
PurpleGirl +3 and the rum isn’t making me sleep.
Warren Terra
@Soonergrunt: The Andrew Ross essay you linked is a crude parody, and acknowledged as such. Frankly, I think it’s in very poor taste.
Anne Laurie
@schrodinger’s cat:
I wrote this back in January:
Events since then have not improved my opinion of Willard Romney. And I suspect the other Massachusetts residents who commented on that thread still don’t like him, either.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
My grandnephew came down for a surprise visit. Also, my living room furniture showed up today after just over a month with a bare room. All in all, a good day.
Liberty60
A bit OT, but thought this expressed my thoughts perfectly about the glibertarian fanboy stuff- that they are like spoiled teenage boys sulking about mom asking them to clean their rooms
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Anne Laurie: Heh, that reminds me a bit of something Joe Queenan wrote years ago about shaking the hand of Geraldo Rivera:
Murakami
Where do they get these people for House Hunters?
Waynski
@hhex65: This.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Murakami: I saw the British version of the show before I ever saw the US one, and the people in that one are just as appalling as the US version.
Narcissus
Aww man tomorrow is mother’s day
shit
Narcissus
I’ll take her to dinner!
/Unshit
freelancer
@Narcissus:
You’re very sweet.
Protip: Doritos Los Tacos don’t count.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@freelancer: but, if the TV commercials are to be believed, people have driven hundreds of miles to eat them, like the Ribwich!
Gretchen
@Anne Laurie: I loved that post. Especially the part where you noted how many people instinctively recoiled from him. Not just indifferent, but repelled.
Lojasmo
@Soonergrunt:
He makes clear in the comments that it is a parody.
Elizabelle
@Murakami:
I found your link interesting and have never even watched “House Hunters.”
Sally Rakowski
So? Edmund White it makes clear that he’s only speculating, too.
What’s wrong with pretending parody and speculation are the truth if people desperately want to cling those kinds of things?
Kathy in St. Louis
Why am I not surprised that a guy who “really isn’t worried about the poor”, straps a dog to the top of his car because there’s no room, and has such an odd affect, was sort of a bully trying to find acceptance in high school? He just crawls with odd clues. If you think that women don’t seem to dig him just because of his policies to them, think again. There is really something just a tad off.
Kathy in St. Louis
@Shawn in ShowMe: Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. They love creeps like this one, and it’s been going on for more than 20 years. My Dad hated Nixon’s guts because he was a creep who was more interested in getting elected…to anything…than in people. He was ruthless, as I think this one is. Difference was, Nixon was actually a pretty bright but horrible human being. This guy is just a horrible human being. It’s not the GOP voting for him that will make a difference, though. They would vote for Attila the Hun if were alive and running today. But independent voters are probably not going to buy this guy’s story. He’s just not genuine, and that failure to be a real person isn’t going to get them in his column.
gaz
@Gin & Tonic: It *is* in fact a spoof. If the threat to strap the author on the roof of his car didn’t register, the author says it’s a gag right in the comments.
A Humble Lurker
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Also, get off your lawn?
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
I’m going to go with lying all the time for ten points.
I wonder if it’s not lying when one really doesn’t have a position or opinion of his own? He’s always been about the money, which is the measure of power for him. We talk about how he has no fixed position. This may be an inherited characteristic(third graph).
Ruckus
@suzanne:
So maybe there really is equality in the world.
gene108
@Soonergrunt:
In the comments section Andy Ross replies that it is parody/satire, when one reader says he’ll spread the horror story around the inter-toobs.
gene108
@Jewish Steel:
Doesn’t roll off the tongue like World B. Free
Mr Stagger Lee
@Corner Stone: Idiots who were not born when the movie came out.
Mustang Bobby
Anne Laurie, in the title of the post you’re going for the last line from Tea and Sympathy by Robert Anderson, right?
“Years from now, when you talk of this — and you will — be kind.”
Very appropriate.
This whole episode was the subject of a casual conversation among some gay friends of mine as we were sitting around this morning: could Mitt Romney’s over-reaction to the gay kid with the bleached hair be a sign of inner angst about his own sexual identity?
Our immediate reaction was, “Eew, ick, yuck,” and decided it was just Mitt Romney being a prick and not in a good way.
Mnemosyne
@Mustang Bobby:
Unlikely, IMO. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a reaction to feeling insecure in his own place within that WASP bastion since his family was a bunch of freaky Mormons, so he needed to prove that he was part of the group by tormenting someone who was even more obviously Not One Of Us.
Larkspur
@Anne Laurie: Holy crap.
I just experienced a hideous flashback. Now I feel like it is time to share with you my own story about how I was bullied by Mitt’s father’s surrogates nearly a half century ago.
These surrogates, my tormenters, were none other than the people I called Mom and Dad. They volunteered to campaign for George Romney in our lower middle class, heavily Democratic factory suburb near Detroit. It was a tough gig, especially since they chose to sub-contract the pavement-pounding to me. They drove the car slowly down the streets while I ran up to each porch, handed out campaign literature, and got yelled at. I was a shy little kid. I remember one woman’s face: it got all red and contorted as she called me the worst name she could think of (“goddamned Romney-lover”).
Later that afternoon we gathered at some volunteer’s front yard to be thanked by the candidate, a semi-tallish humanoid in an expensively-tailored dark tweed business-capitalist overcoat. It was dusk, and his silvery sidewalls glowed as if they were lit from within. (I know, I know, that’s where his brain was, but it didn’t get washed till 1965, and he didn’t report the washing till 1967. His hair glowed.)
flash chat rooms
Dear God.. That woman does NOT know how to shut up and listen. You were being all calm and nice and she was just being a total asshat. People like that make me want to bang my head against a wall for 72 hours straight.
David Koch
0
Lolly
@Soonergrunt: To be honest, I wasn’t sure whether that was memoir or parody at first–at best a misremembered parody, since we didn’t have silk-screened t-shirts in 62.
But then in the comments, the author refers to it as an attempt at parody.