Real men!

I used to date a woman who constantly told me that she was looking for “a real man.� She said this apparently in an attempt to convince me that I should marry her because I was “a real man� with emotions and sensitivities in contrast to what she had been hanging with in the past. I write this in the shadows of this weeks interesting turn of events in the presidential contest where it has been revealed that one Mitt Romney and his band of cohorts at an exclusive men’s school in Detroit, Michigan, in 1965, apparently assaulted a gay fellow student attending there and pinned him to the floor as Romney himself cut off some hair that the student was wearing that offended him. CNN, the network that I usually watch, questioned the story as published by the Washington Post even after two weeks of solid research and the timing of the story, coming just days after President Barack Obama endorsed the idea of same sex marriages, becoming the first United States president in history to do so. The general spin and consensus by CNN was that this story would have no effect on the fall election and that the only reason that it had any legs at all was the absence of a better narrative by Romney himself of his life before he became a public figure. Romney is supposed to be this reserved sort of fellow who keeps his life private, unlike president Obama who published a narrative about his early life which even included the admission that he had scored some drugs when he was in High school. One of those involved in this assault by Romney said that he was still troubled by it 47 years later because he is now an attorney and he knows what the definition of assault is.

I have news for Romney, CNN, and everybody else! That news is that so many have been assaulted and bullied during their adolescent years and they do not easily forget what has happened to them and it can leave scars that can last a lifetime. Romney has stated that he does not remember the event and we wonder if that might be because he had done so many such things with his gang that none of them stands out in any particular way. If president Obama can remember doing drugs in high school, we are sure that a drug free Mitt Romney could surely remember doing such an insensitive and horrific thing to one of the students in the school where he attended. All four of those participating in this event with him can remember it and are deeply embarrassed by the whole thing despite CNN’s belief that it might have no truth to it at all. If this event does nothing else, it further solidifies the narrative that Mitt Romney is the spoiled, arrogant and isolated child of a rich man who has had privileges bestowed on him that over ninety nine percent of us could never be the beneficiaries of. At his commencement speech at Liberty University Saturday, Romney stated that, when asked, his father stated that the most important thing in his life had been the raising of his four male children. If the rest were safely tucked away at an exclusive high school while George Romney was the CEO of American Motors and then the governor of Michigan, one wonders just how much real raising that this man actually did with his children. People often pattern themselves after the examples that they have seen, and George Romney’s example was of a man, Mitt’s grandfather, who fled to Mexico to avoid federal laws that outlawed things like the four wives that he had as a practicing Mormon out in the state of Utah before the turn of the twentieth century. It is interesting and a little bit humorous that Romney today believes that marriage is defined as between one man and one woman when his own immediate family has this history of polygamy in its so recent past. We will give the Romney’s, and, particularly his wife Ann, the benefit of the doubt on this one but we cannot give him a pass on this high school bullying, given the information that we have before us to the contrary because we strongly believe that Romney may still have these tendencies.

As far as being able to remember bullying and the scars that it can leave, we are a perfect example of that. We were an undersized freshman in the fall of 1963 when we entered high school and we were assigned to a physical education class with the toughest kids in Vienna High School. These were adolescents in men’s bodies and they incessantly picked and punched on every undersized freshman that attended that class. There is much that we have forgotten about high school but fourth hour P.E. still stands out in our minds for the abuse that we underwent there. The real reason that the Romney story may continue to have legs throughout this campaign is the simple fact that every kid who has been bullying can sympathize. Being on the wrong side of a bullying charge in a presidential election is, we can tell you, not the place to be. Karl Rove, the Republican strategist has stated that George W. Bush’s drunken driving charge may have cost him over four million votes in the 2000 presidential election. We can guarantee you that Romney’s antics will cost him votes in this election.

CNN is correct in one thing about Romney. There is much that we do not know about this man, his personal background, and, how that would affect what kind of president that he might be. The presidency is very confining, isolating, while it also has a great deal of ability, in the right hands, to effect great and lasting change of either a positive or a negative nature on this world of ours. But, even if one is president, there are still going to be long standing personal tendencies that one cannot change. Will a person who controlled a gang in high school that did the things that they say that Romney did, translate out in the current world, to a man who might lead us into wars with lesser powers such as Syria or Iran if he was persuaded by those around him that he could not fail to win those conflicts? We just finished with a president who did those very things because of his arrogance and isolation from the facts and history and we are not sure that we can afford another such experience, at least not in the near term anyway! Theodore Roosevelt conceived the idea of the bully pulpit but he was not a bully in the White House and that is more than I can say about Mr. Romney and the uneasiness that he brings out in me. The presidency is so isolating anyway and to bring a man into it that has been isolated from the common things of life seems to me to be taking a chance that we do not need to be taking when we have a president in office now who has proven time and time again that he has the best interest of even the most persecuted among us in mind in his every day workings. When Barack Obama spoke about his evolution to the position that he currently holds on same sex marriage he mentioned his interactions with his wife, his children, neighbors and others who had led him to take this very difficult political stand. He also mentioned one other thing--the biblical golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We could never see Barack Obama doing the things that Mitt Romney has been accused of, and we would not vote for him if we thought that he did. They say that Ann Romney changed Mitt Romney when she got together with him. However, we are not voting for Ann Romney for the presidency of the United States and we know that she is ill and there is no guarantee how long she might be around to influence this man and to thwart some of his tendencies.

It is a gamble that we do not feel that America can afford to take.

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe