Right. Romney looks back on his high school “pranks”:
He chuckles a good deal, in a “we all know this is no big deal” way.
He does the classic notpology – “if anyone was offended or hurt by that” then he’s totes sorry but they’re obviously oversensitive.
Hey the guy was closeted! So obviously he Romney had no idea.
You know how boys are. [indulgent chuckle]
I fucking hate people.
I know just what kind of horrible bully Romney was; the archetype is everywhere.
Back when I was a teenager, I was an evangelical fundamentalist Christian. I harrassed a poor young lesbian girl over the Internet, to the point of her crying once when I talked to her. She admitted ever since that talking to me made her upset.
In the last few years, I got so guilty over that. I found the girl (who has since transitioned into a man) and I apologized to him for my rudeness. I showed full regret and I realized what an ass I had been.
If Romney’s apology were more along the lines of what mine was “I regretted my rudeness, and I am sorry for the pain it caused, I should never have said such things” then I’d believe him.
He laughed. He deflected. He denied. He not-pologized.
He’s not sorry.
I think it says a lot about Republicans today that they gravitate in such large numbers towards bullies like Mitt Romney.
Well, he’s entitled to chuckle.
After all, the statute of limitations long ran out on his youthful
assault and batteryhijinks.I have seen the harm that bullying does. I tried to argue that point in the comments thread on “More Free Speech Problems in Canada” last week over at Dispatches From the Culture Wars, but free thinkers are a tough lot and most seem to think that everyone should just have a thick skin when people are verbally abusive. My skin’s plenty thick, thank you, but I know people whose life experience has left them highly vulnerable. Bullying—physical, verbal, or emotional—does far more damage that bullies realize.
Not to mention the fact that the victim is safely six feet under and can’t speak out against him now.
Katherine Lorraine, I’m a life-long atheist, for some reason I find de-conversion to be quite fascinating. I read stories from ex-christian, ex-mormon (“x-mo”, as they call it in their own jargon,) ex-scientologists, ex-moonies, etc. There are some common threads. I have noticed that your experience is a fairly common hind-sight observation.
A dogmatic theological structure gives people permission to be cruel to others. After leaving a cult the subject realizes that the ONLY reason that they had to be hostile toward certain people is because of the dogmatic superstitions that they were indoctrinated with. People who are under the impression that they are acting in accordance with a cosmic creature start to believe that they can’t do anything wrong.
They jump up and down screaming that atheists have no morality — it’s called projection.
Yeah, some free thinkers could do with getting their faces shoved into the ground a few times. Remind them of what it’s like to be bullied with no recourse. Or just get them to shut the fuck up about how wonderful racial slurs and hate speech are. Which ever works for me.
The media should be focussing on energy and the economy?
Where was Greg Kilmeade with his calls for focus during the last four years of “Where’s the birth certificate?”
Sorry, Brian Kilmeade.
“if anyone was offended or hurt by that”?
I think John Lauber was pretty hurt by your scissor attack, Mittens. It’s too late to apologize to him now, but you could acknowledge that what you did to him was fucked up.
What Alyson said. I just did a post saying the same thing only more of it. That “if” is such an outrage.