Mitt Romney is such a kidder

By Richard K. Barry

When Mitt Romney was 17 or 18 years old, he thought it would be good fun to terrorize a fellow high school student by leading a group of friends to hold him down and cut his hair. The young man, John Lauber, screamed for help with tears in his eyes. Lauber was, according to The Washington Post, a "soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality."

Apparently, teenage Mitt didn't like the looks of the other boy, telling a friend that "He can't look like that. That's wrong." So being the leader he was meant to be, he did something about it. What a kidder.

The Post verified the story with five separate accounts. One who was there, Thomas Buford, says it troubles him to this day. Many years after the event, Lauber commented that "it was horrible." Nice.

What I find most disturbing about this story is Romney's need to enforce conformity with his own views and his sense that other people who are different are a personal affront to him.

His egocentrism is incredible. And this was not a prank. It was an assault by a young man who should have been charged under the criminal code. Of course, people born into privilege like the Mittster are rarely called to account for such transgressions. If he had been, daddy's lawyer would have, no doubt, taken care of it.

I knew people like Romney in high school who did the kinds of things he did at that age. I wouldn't want any of them near the White House either.

I know, we are supposed to think that people change, but they don't change that much from their teens into adulthood. Not in my experience.

Maybe now we know why people don't like Mitt Romney. He's an asshole. And given that Romney also told Brian Kilmeade in a radio interview that he didn't remember the incident, that makes him a lying asshole.