The mark of a coward


I am sure that everyone by now has heard of Mitt Romney’s hair assault on a fellow student and his other anti-gay bullying behavior when he attended his exclusive private and single-sex (until 1984) high school.

I will have a more personal reflection on the Mitt Romney high school story later but I want to highlight James Wolcott’s perceptive take on it.

The incident of hair assault revealed this week that led colleague Bruce Handy to dub Romney “the Demon Barber of Cranbrook” shows the mark of a bully, part of a pattern that goes from strapping his dog to a car roof to “I like to fire people.” But I think that Romney as bully misses something larger about the political, public man: He’s a coward. He’s never gone against the grain, stood up for an underdog or advanced an unpopular cause before it became popular, risked a single gleaming hair off his head, shone any backbone apart from the determination to win, tapped into anything larger than himself, risen to the moment. His selfishness is such that you think conservatives would appreciate him more, since that’s their driving ethos. He may have to show some of that old nasty Cranbrook spirit if he truly wants to win their love.

Ted Rall also weighs in:

First, this story probably has legs. It frames an unpleasant narrative about Mitt Romney’s personality: Not only do his politics suck, he’s an asshole. Personally. The kind of asshole who abuses his pets. Who takes over profitable companies and bleeds them dry, leaving people jobless for no good reason. Who mutilates someone because he’s different.

It doesn’t matter whether the story is even true: the image fits. It works. That’s the problem.

I don’t think stories like these will persuade the die-hards one way or the other. But it will leave a very bad taste in everyone’s mouths.

Comments

  1. Kevin says

    I think its dangerous to make conclusions about a person from events that happened decades ago. People change. The only way we can tell is by focusing on their recent behavior. That is what should be the focus of the discussion.

  2. evilDoug says

    Something that has been running through my mind since I first heard the story of his criminal assault on a fellow student: how would Romney score on a psychopath test?

  3. Thorne says

    Problem is, there’s nothing in his recent behavior to show that he’s any different than he was then.

  4. Nomen Nescio says

    well, he’s a successful politician who has no qualms about running on the republican party ticket, so that’s two more strikes against him…

  5. Mano Singham says

    Kevin, you are right but so is Thorne.

    What Wolcott is pointing out is that there doesn’t seem to be a single incident in which Romney ever took a stand which posed the slightest risk to himself or his ambitions. This is shown in his ducking the whole issue of racism in the Mormon church.

  6. Pierce R. Butler says

    Please don’t take this as any sort of defense of Romney or his pathological party, but when, if ever, has our incumbent president “gone against the grain, stood up for an underdog or advanced an unpopular cause before it became popular”?

  7. says

    part of a pattern that goes from strapping his dog to a car roof to “I like to fire people.”

    both accusations being shameless framing. Right-wingers do this all the time, and Wolcott is not doing himself any favors by emulating their tactics. That’s not a perceptive take, that’s petty bullshitting.

  8. Henry Gale says

    I’m not sure Mr Obama has ever risked anything. For sure his political decisions have been based in what is most advantageous to his campaign/presidency.

    Has he stepped up and directed the attorney general to investigate Wall Street? Did he say marriage is a human right? Did he use his pulpit to advocate for universal health care?

  9. says

    1. I am not the Kevin in comment 1.

    2. Definition. Hijinks: The felony of assault when committed by rich kids.

  10. Midnight Rambler says

    His response is more telling about who he is now than the fact that he participated in bullying 50 years ago. And that response shows that not much has changed.

  11. Kevin says

    I agree. However, those are the issues that we should be focusing on, not some case from about two decades ago. Whether he was an ass or not before doesn’t really matter, only whether he is an ass now.

  12. 'Tis Himself says

    Who takes over profitable companies and bleeds them dry, leaving people jobless for no good reason.

    As an economist, this is what I find most upsetting about Romney. For years he ran a company whose raison d’être was to take control of profitable companies and suck every possible dollar out of them. People lost their jobs, lost their benefits, lost their pensions just so Mitt Romney could add another million or ten to his off-shore bank accounts.

    Romney makes a big deal about how he’s “for jobs.” This is a new attitude for him, because when he was CEO at Bain that was not anything that concerned him. In fact quite the contrary.

  13. Greg Barnes says

    State Sen. Barack Obama delivered a speech in Chicago on Oct. 2, 2002. In his speech, Obama said that what he was opposed to was “a dumb war … a rash war.” He said the war was a “cynical attempt” to shove “ideological agendas down our throats” and would distract from domestic problems such as poverty and health care.

    http://www.npr.org

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *