Here is the more detailed version about Romney when he was in high school in the 1960s http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_print.html
This morning I was on the treadmill downstairs while watching CNN (my headphones broke – couldn’t listen to my iPod), the headline was that Romney apologized for his high school pranks in the olden days in the 1960s in Michigan. Washington Post exposed the story a couple of days ago saying that Romney and his buddies picked on a fellow classmate who was assumed to be gay – and voila! that’s all you need for the media to spin it 360 around the topic of the week: gay rights.
The story goes on to expose Romney as this New England boarding school brat, who was the son of the governor, well known for practical jokes and whatnot. The story hinted about inequality, privilege, and racist institutions. If you look at this story on balance, I’d say that 95% is about Romney’s life at Cranbrook, and 5% on this guy who frankly in my belief is a mere pawn in this round of media attacks against Romney. You know what? I am sure Mitt Romney messed around in high school and did stupid things… just like the rest of us! What surprises me is to what length this story goes to portray Romney as a gregarious womanizer (ok for his age then, I’ll tone it down a little – “chick magnet”) and prankster not that much unlike how the liberal media has treated George W. Bush and John McCain in the past. I do not argue that these folks were well-off and fortunate in their schoolings – they were; but to attack Romney in the story under the guise of lamentation for a Cranbrook gay alum IS “mean-spirited.”
The media has done it again – twice in a week – in pandering to the President, scrutinizing the Republicans – making them sound anti-gay. This kind of media and journalistic practice – from a news source that I personally had great respect for – is despicable and disappointing. I can not fathom any other motives besides an attempt to further polarize the American people forcing the political middle to diverge into respective ideological camps. Those allegedly Democratic-leaning former classmates of Romney’s claim that “politics in no way colored their recollection.” But come on? How often do coincidence actually exist in American politics? Wow, the Post could not have found a better time to release THIS story?!
Journalistic bias aside, I think the larger issue here is making a big deal out of nothing! It does not require much for a reasonable person to piece this string of thoughts together: all-male elite boarding school, 1960s counterculture, expulsion from smoking cigarette, [and my personal favorites…] Romney’s involvement in Glee Club and Pep Club in order for one to understand that Romney and his buddies were still very much immature boys in school in a highly structured environment. If we measure our political leaders by what they have done in their adolescent years, we might as well as forfeit our right to vote for the President of the United States and opt to consider the next All-American Homecoming King. What’s more to come? “Gay student loses in a bid to become homecoming king: a 21st century revisit of the institutional exclusion of gays in high school?” Please. What else’s new?
Time Out 