__
It’s all over the internetz, but I found this image at Charlie Pierce’s place. As Mr. Pierce very fairly points out, Eric “Etch-A-Sketch” Fehrnstrom has fiercely repudiated the provenance of this flyer. (And Fehrnstrom is an honorable man; so are they all, all honorable men…)
Paul Constant points out that Kerry Healey is still defending Willard Romney’s back, ineptly. Constant is too nice to point out that Healey is stuck with this Sisyphean task because she’s Michael Steele in a dress (lost her post-Willard gubernatorial run by 21 points, got curb-stomped by Scott “Cosmo Boy” Brown when she attempted to steal ‘Ted Kennedy’s seat’)– unemployable outside the Wingnut Welfare circuit.
Boston Pride 2012 — it runs ten days, because we are just that fabulous — doesn’t start until June 1st. It’s reasonable to assume that Candidate Romney will find ways to be very, very far away from the Hub of the Universe at that season, but I can’t wait to see what the creative Pride Paraders come up with by then…
Speaking of timely scheduling, tomorrow Mr. Romney is due to deliver the commencement address at Jerry Falwell’s college. As Paul Constant points out, “Neither Mitt Romney Nor the Boy He Bullied Would Be Allowed at Liberty University” (no longhairs, and no Mormons, either):
But they’re making an exception for this cultist, because Liberty University officials are citing a passage from Exodus (“And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.”) to suggest that God wants them to vote for an “able” Mormon, rather than a “disabled” Muslim socialist. That’s a real stretch, even for Bible-scrying.
“Bible-scrying”: there’s a phrase that needs to be added to the general vocabulary!
suekzoo
So will Mitt open with “It’s good to be here at Liberty University. All your hair is the right length!”
Joseph Nobles
“All citizens deserve equal rights regardless of their sexual preference.”
Amazing that such a simple statement is so vehemently opposed.
Mustang Bobby
I doubt anyone will be able to hear the speech over all the dog whistles.
JPL
@suekzoo: “It’s good to be here at Liberty University. All your hair is the right length which is fortunate because I left my scissors at home! ”
Must remember to mention the scissors.
Sally Rakowski
I wonder if he’ll resurrect that old ‘states rights’ dog whistle.
Anyone remember that one?
JPL
Collins’ column states that high school pranks should be off limit but then continues talking about Mitt’s character.
If you can link to the NYTimes, you won’t be disappointed.
link
Jamey
Pamphlet wasn’t distributed by Team Rmoney. Damn!
c u n d gulag
I’m still hoping for a video of Mitt, on a float, leading a Gay Pride Parade in MA – dressed like Carmen Miranda, and singing “Weekend in Havana.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1KmUV7jaag
Now THAT might cause some conservative’s heads to explode!
I just hope the collateral damage is minimal.
WereBear
No wonder the Bible endures; one can find a verse in there that justifies just about anything.
I’ve concluded that the only way the Right Way makes sense is when someone already has the “templates installed” and knows what the heck they are talking about. Years of talking Family Values and then being outed as a diaper-wearing cheater have taken their toll.
Mitt is simply the Peak of their Low.
WereBear
I meant “Right Wing.”
Joseph Nobles
Wow, just saw a tweet from Erickson Ericksonson:
VICTORY!
arguingwithsignposts
Man, that is some weak-ass shit, ever for fundamentalists.
Riilism
@Joseph Nobles: Airwick Airwickson sounds a tad jealous of Mitt with that tweet…
amk
Ezra Klein
The Senate just took a big step towards filibuster reform
E Stamm
Note that it says ‘sexual PREFERENCE’, not ‘ORIENTATION’. Of course Mittens did this flyer. Even when he is trying NOT to be a douchebag, he is a douchebag.
bob h
Republicans can’t really show at top-tier universities because the only people who would come are the Young Republicans and they might get laughed off the stage. Nothing better illustrates the way the Republicans have become the party of the ignorant and uneducated better than their avoidance of real universities.
Mino
Curious to see how many JP Morgan execs get fired for their performance. Since they are perfectly capable of policing their own, right?
Couldn’t happen at a more provident time, though.
arguingwithsignposts
@amk: I would be much happier if they got rid of the silent hold with it.
Ralphie;
Everyone should send the Rmoney campaign a handful of flash memory cards.
Kay
@Joseph Nobles:
I don’t care what they say, I think his response was weird and out of touch. Bullying is huge among anyone who has school-age kids or works with kids. It just is. It’s discussed constantly. Public schools have mediation programs, written policies on bullying, they hold assemblies, it’s been debated in half the state legislatures, so there’s even movement to a state law response.
I know that wasn’t true in 1964, but it isn’t 1964.
Is Mitt Romney completely unaware of what’s going on in this country outside his direct, immediate experience?
Why is his response out of 1964? No one I know laughs off bullying of the sort that was described. People may disagree with any given response to bullying, but, Jesus Christ, if you’re at all involved with kids the last 5 or so years you know it’s an issue that is taken seriously now, not a “prank”. His response was weird personally, but it’s also weird politically. I know his kids are grown, but how in the hell did he miss the huge anti-bullying push?
WereBear
@amk: I’m trying not to get too excited.
In other news, I just installed Cloud Reader on my Chromebook and that is my plan for the long weekend I’m taking to recover from whatever the heck has been going on. 3 rounds of antibiotics later I’m “cured” of pneumonia and sinus infection but still feel like a dishrag that’s been wrung out by the Incredible Hulk.
I think the new place we moved into this fall has Sick Building Syndrome; I’m not the only one with increased sickness this winter and spring. For now, I’m taking lunch elsewhere to give me a break, and talk to my boss about propping open a door now that the weather is better. There is no outside ventilation there. In some ways it is a very environmentally conscious building, but in others it’s an airtight bottle.
On probiotics, still off coffee and alcohol. At least I have lovely lovely books!
PurpleGirl
@Kay: His kids weren’t being bullied. I’m not saying that they bullied anyone, but they were not the subjects of bullying by others. He could ignore it. Like many of the parents or the priest my mother complained to about the kids bullying me — “No, it wasn’t their child, their child goes to the Catholic school and they are good kids. No, it couldn’t be them.”
PurpleGirl
Didn’t some students at Liberty University (had a hard time typing that name) protest his being invited to give the speech? I wonder if there will be any protesters at the ceremony?
WereBear
@Kay: I was telling Mr. WereBear last night that his response was more suited to being asked, “So, it turns out you painted your butt blue to moon the other team during the big game.”
The other people involved had appropriate responses. He didn’t.
Soonergrunt
So I go to this Korean/Greek fusion place for lunch yesterday. We get there, and I have a little trouble with ordering. Young Korean girl behind the counter and I just can’t seem to make each understand the other.
Finally, she says to me “You like egg roll?” and I’m like “yeah, that would be great,” and without skipping a beat, she says shakes her head and says “no egg roll.”
All I could do was stand there with a dumb look on my face.
RossInDetroit
@JPL:
Thanks for the Collins link. I love reading her. Unsurprisingly, she’s still carrying a torch for poor Seamus. I get why, but it’s becoming sort of… peculiar. Like Brooks’ reflexively dividing humanity into the two groups that make some trivial event sensible to him.
ETA: This quote sums up Gail’s nice-girl aggression:
“Romney could have absolutely no recollection of this event is way more shocking than the incident itself. Did he engage in this sort of behavior so often that things just sort of ran together?
I don’t believe he’s that lacking in feeling. So I propose that we give him the benefit of the doubt and agree that he is lying through his teeth.”
Kay
@PurpleGirl:
I could be wrong, but I think there’s been a sea-change on bullying. I agree with you that it would have been taken lightly when I was a teenager, but it seems to me have to reached some tipping point, where it is now socially unacceptable. I simply don’t hear “boys will be boys” anymore. In my experience, it was driven by the parents of kids who are bullied, and there are a lot of parents with kids who are bullied, they are “different” for all sorts of reasons. The parents are not ashamed, and they’re not apologizing. They want it stopped.
This is mainstream. It isn’t fringy lefties. We have anti-bullying assemblies at the public high school here, and this is a high school where parent volunteers had to be told to stop conducting prayer circles prior to high school musical performances.
RossInDetroit
I spend a lot of time at two high schools. Coincidentally, they’re about 4 miles from Cranbrook. Anti bullying posters, assemblies and speeches are very much in evidence. Yet it still happens and leads to serious consequences. Schools are like an emotional pressure cooker. Too many people of the same age packed in and struggling for influence, popularity, power and everything else that people want. It’s never going to end, but I hope to FSM that it’s better than when I was in high school 35 years ago.
Jamey
@Soonergrunt: I wish your posting was short enough to make into a FWP meme.
amk
@PurpleGirl: well, if they do, they better have their hair of just right height.
RossInDetroit
@Soonergrunt:
Reminds me of a Belushi era SNL routine. Did you finally get fed?
Kay
@WereBear:
Right. Their responses were appropriate to the time. Now. Not 1964. That’s the missing piece for me. My mother in law used to let my husband drive her car to football practice when he was 14/ 15, because it was easier than driving him. The thing is, she recognizes that now that would be considered wildly irresponsible and socially unacceptable (and it would be, besides being illegal) because she’s actually living in the world the rest of us are living in. She’s aware of social norms, and that they change.
Anya
@RossInDetroit:
Believe it or not, this was tweedy’s reaction as well. He kept saying: How could you not remember cutting someone’s hair by force? Did he cut so many boys’ hairs that he cannot remember which boy they’re talking about it?
doofus
@Kay: Dude’s likely got more “pranks” in his past. Too much of an apology can bind his future activity if more of them come to light.
RossInDetroit
@Anya:
I don’t think anyone actually believes that he can’t remember assaulting someone. He just thinks that if he stonewalls it will blow over. And in the case of his base this is probably correct.
Ash Can
@RossInDetroit: His base probably thinks more highly of him because of his bullying. Hopefully all those less-engaged moderates and “independents” out there have more character.
RossInDetroit
Interesting point I read somewhere yesterday on youthful indiscretions. Karl Rove is said to have thought that the revelation of Bush II’s long ago DIY cost him 4M votes. I’m surprised it’s that many.
As it turned out, 4M votes didn’t cost him the election. But Mitt probably doesn’t have that many to spare.
Steve
@RossInDetroit: That’s funny, I went to high school about 4 miles from Cranbrook. I think it’s a parking lot now though.
Soonergrunt
@RossInDetroit: Eventually. The egg drop soup was lamentable, but the Gyro w/bulgogi was pretty good.
JoeShabadoo
Every time I hear about Liberty University I’m reminded how the world really works. People from this school should have trouble being hired for anything but instead wingnuts keep giving them jobs. Connections are everything and most people don’t care about job performance but the group you belong to.
Soonergrunt
@Jamey: I would make “no eggroll” part of the rotating tag if I knew how.
Suffern ACE
@Mino: What should they be fired for? JP Morgan wanted their employees to create a hedge in case of economic turmoil in Europe, and they did it. They are now set to loose money no matter what happens.
NancyDarling
I think the prank RMoney pulled on his near-blind professor may be worse than the haircut. This is in light of prep-school hazing/cruelty that was common at the time. I don’t think it was ever acceptable to pull that kind of prank on a blind person.
Was RMoney disciplined by the Cranbrook administrators for ANY of his pranks? I read somewhere that a student was kicked out for smoking.
One must keep one’s priorities straight and maintain one’s standards, mustn’t one?
NancyDarling
@Soonergrunt: There’s a Korean/Greek fusion restaurant in OKC?
Villago Delenda Est
@RossInDetroit:
Oh, geeze. The shiv is in, and it’s been turned.
JoeShabadoo
@NancyDarling: Romney has never been disciplined in his life. He could have murdered his professor and the school would have covered for him because of his powerful, rich and connected family.
Soonergrunt
@NancyDarling: That was my reaction upon hearing of it. It’s just north of downtown, corner of 12th and Hudson. Little shack that looks like it used to be a walk-up burger stand or some such.
Anton Sirius
Anne, if you’re going to drop that Julius Caesar “honorable men” quote, you really ought to have linked to this instead of just the text. No performance I’ve ever seen brings that soliloquy to life quite like it.
@NancyDarling:
It wasn’t just any student. It was Lauber, the kid who Romney “pranked”. Which, if you choose to read between the lines, tells you a lot about how Cranbrook was run back then.
Steve
The bar for kicking the governor’s kid out of school is always going to be pretty high.
Raenelle
@Anton Sirius: Sorry, Anton. I love Shatner as much as the next guy, but no one ever did that soliloquy as good as Brando.
gbear
Yes, that does sound like the timeline for the Romney campaign. It should be his motto.
Stan of the Sawgrass
How come nobody’s back here cheering for “bible-scrying?” It’s perfect: first you eviscerate, then poke around in the pile of guts for a sign that only YOU have the skill to see or understand. Describes 90% of the “bible study” sessions I had to attend as a kid.
See also: haruspex, haruspicate.
also: google “Jimmy Falwell+bible+intestines. Let me know what pops up.
Foregone Conclusion
David Cameron was famously a member of a dining society at Oxford which completely smashed up restaurants and pubs (although they did leave behind a cheque to pay for the damage afterwards, which was sort of the point). No, he was never caught, nobody was ever arrested for criminal damage. It didn’t do his reputation too much harm except for the Labour Party base, surprisingly. Then again, he was going against a widely despised Prime Minister, almost Romneyesque in his inability to behave like a normal human being, in the middle of a recession.
Ken
@c u n d gulag:
I think you mean “implode”.
Brachiator
@RossInDetroit:
Collins is either clueless or has been living under a rock.
Maury, Jerry Springer and other daytime tv clowns used to do a lot of “see me now” shows where people who were shy or ugly ducklings or bullied would talk about how much they were affected by the mean crap they were put through, and how much they wanted to show the bullies their new and improved shelves.
And yet, often when they brought the bullies on stage, a common reaction would be, “I’m sorry, I don’t really remember you at all.” And the “see me now” person would just be crestfallen, even if the bully apologized and noted that as a teen, they just did not have much of a social conscience at all and simply did not think about people outside of their social circle or the impact of their actions.
And no, this is not to defend Romney at all. Just to note that human nature is complex and that sometimes kids can be remarkably dim about anything but themselves.
mai naem
@Brachiator: Yeah, but five other guys remembered it. And according to the reporter there were more people who either knew of it or saw it but did not want to go on the record about it.
Terry
@NancyDarling: The student kicked out for smoking was the guy who was assaulted, some time afterwards. He was “turned in” by another student.