The Barber of Cranbrook (Mitt Scissorhands)
Posted by John Cassidy
Friday, May 11, 2012
My oh my, Mitt: what another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into. By going on the radio yesterday morning and insisting, once again, that you couldn’t remember how, back in high school, you and some pals pinned to the ground a student from the year below you who later came out as gay, hacking off his bleached-blond bangs, you’ve transformed what would have been a one-day or two-day story into a media feeding frenzy.
The actual hair-shearing incident, first revealed in a long and detailed story by the Washington Post’s Jason Horowitz, was forty-seven years old and unlikely to do you any great or lasting damage. To be sure, the details of how the victim of the attack, a sensitive boy called John Lauber, cried out in vain for help, made you look like a nasty high-school bully. And the timing of publication—a day after President Obama had come out in favor of gay marriage—was awkward. But heck, you were only eighteen when this all happened. With an apology from you to Lauber’s family and an acknowledgement that what you and your classmates did was cruel and malicious, something that you’ve come to regret over the years, most Americans would have been willing to write off the whole thing as a youthful misdemeanor.
There was, after all, other material in the Post piece that didn’t
fit the “Lord of the Flies” story line. Like how you volunteered at a nearby
mental hospital, worked your way into the top classes, and joined eleven school
organizations, including the homecoming committee. With an apology from you in
hand, your campaign could have pointed reporters to more favorable accounts of
your time at Cranbrook, including one in a recent edition of Automobile
Magazine that includes this description of you from a former classmate: with
his powerful father, “he could have been an arrogant, stuck-up, snotty little
brat, But he was a great guy—an all-American kid with a great sense of humor,
very self-effacing.”
But instead of fessing up and putting the story to rest, you called in Brian Kilmeade, a reporter at Fox News Radio, and said to him with a chuckle: “I’ll tell you, the thought that that fellow was homosexual was the furthest thing from our minds back in the nineteen-sixties, so that was not the case. But as to pranks that were played back then, I don’t remember them all, but again, high school days, I did stupid things…. And if anyone was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that.”
Right there, Mitt, you transformed a disturbing but dated tale about the actions of an immature high-school senior a year before the Beatles released “Revolver” into a front-page story about your credibility and character. In repeating the claim that your press office first made to the Post that you don’t even have any recollection of what you did to Lauber, you came across as either incredibly callous or incredibly disingenuous.
As the Post article made clear, and as my colleague Amy Davidson emphasized in her brilliant and damning post, others who were there remember what happened to Lauber all too vividly. One of them, Phillip Maxwell, who is now an attorney, told ABC News yesterday, “When you see somebody who is simply different taken down that way and is terrified and you see that look in their eye you never forget it. And that was what we all walked away with.” Maxwell went on: “This was bullying supreme.”
Doubtless, you will protest that the Post got some of its minor facts wrong. Lauber’s family has said as much, as has one of Romney’s classmates, Stuart White. You may also point out that that Maxwell is a Democrat, and so are some of the other Post sources. But nobody has contradicted Horowitz’s basic account of what happened to Lauber. One of the witnesses, David Seed, a retired school principal, once served as a Republican country chairman in Michigan. He said to the Post, “To this day it troubles me…. What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”
In the face of this sort of testimony, there’s really not much point dispatching, as you did this morning, one of your flaks, Kerry Healey, to defend you on CNN. (“Mitt Romney a bully?” Healey told Soledad O’Brien. “The answer is no…. He does not have a vicious bone in his body.”) If you can’t find some former classmates to contradict the account in the Post (and if you could find them they’d already be out there giving their version of events) you had better change course, and quickly.
Brazening it out won’t work. This details are too juicy, and your opponents are too resourceful, for the saga to fade away. If you aren’t careful, and it might well already be too late, it will join the dog-on-the-car-roof story as one that defines you in the public mind. And politically, this is a much more damaging tale. Think of all those female voters with children, a demographic in which you already trailing badly, to whom the school bully is the worst of the worst.
So suck it up, Mitt, and arrange another interview—this time with a more credible news organization. Tell the interviewer that reading about the Lauber incident and talking it over with former schoolmates has refreshed in your mind at least some of the details of what happened. Say what you and your friends did was a bad act, but one that reflected the stuffy, cloistered, all-male environment in which it took place. For goodness’ sake, avoid the word “prank.” And don’t say again that you didn’t even know the word “homosexual” in 1965. Whether you viewed Lauber as a “sissy,” a “girl,” or just as some sort of nonconformist weirdo doesn’t make much difference. You and your pals terrorized and humiliated him.
Display some remorse. Talk about some of the gay people who worked for you in Massachusetts, and how you related to them. Show some humility, and some humanity.
Such a performance won’t convert any die-hard Democrats. It will, however, be noticed by independents and others who are thinking of voting for you but who already have some doubts about your character and your background. Being perceived as an out-of-touch rich doofus is something you can work on gradually.
Being perceived as an out-of-touch rich bully is a serious problem that needs addressing right now before it gets any worse.
Mitt, it’s time to learn a trick from Obama and call in Diane Sawyer. Do it today!
But instead of fessing up and putting the story to rest, you called in Brian Kilmeade, a reporter at Fox News Radio, and said to him with a chuckle: “I’ll tell you, the thought that that fellow was homosexual was the furthest thing from our minds back in the nineteen-sixties, so that was not the case. But as to pranks that were played back then, I don’t remember them all, but again, high school days, I did stupid things…. And if anyone was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that.”
Right there, Mitt, you transformed a disturbing but dated tale about the actions of an immature high-school senior a year before the Beatles released “Revolver” into a front-page story about your credibility and character. In repeating the claim that your press office first made to the Post that you don’t even have any recollection of what you did to Lauber, you came across as either incredibly callous or incredibly disingenuous.
As the Post article made clear, and as my colleague Amy Davidson emphasized in her brilliant and damning post, others who were there remember what happened to Lauber all too vividly. One of them, Phillip Maxwell, who is now an attorney, told ABC News yesterday, “When you see somebody who is simply different taken down that way and is terrified and you see that look in their eye you never forget it. And that was what we all walked away with.” Maxwell went on: “This was bullying supreme.”
Doubtless, you will protest that the Post got some of its minor facts wrong. Lauber’s family has said as much, as has one of Romney’s classmates, Stuart White. You may also point out that that Maxwell is a Democrat, and so are some of the other Post sources. But nobody has contradicted Horowitz’s basic account of what happened to Lauber. One of the witnesses, David Seed, a retired school principal, once served as a Republican country chairman in Michigan. He said to the Post, “To this day it troubles me…. What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”
In the face of this sort of testimony, there’s really not much point dispatching, as you did this morning, one of your flaks, Kerry Healey, to defend you on CNN. (“Mitt Romney a bully?” Healey told Soledad O’Brien. “The answer is no…. He does not have a vicious bone in his body.”) If you can’t find some former classmates to contradict the account in the Post (and if you could find them they’d already be out there giving their version of events) you had better change course, and quickly.
Brazening it out won’t work. This details are too juicy, and your opponents are too resourceful, for the saga to fade away. If you aren’t careful, and it might well already be too late, it will join the dog-on-the-car-roof story as one that defines you in the public mind. And politically, this is a much more damaging tale. Think of all those female voters with children, a demographic in which you already trailing badly, to whom the school bully is the worst of the worst.
So suck it up, Mitt, and arrange another interview—this time with a more credible news organization. Tell the interviewer that reading about the Lauber incident and talking it over with former schoolmates has refreshed in your mind at least some of the details of what happened. Say what you and your friends did was a bad act, but one that reflected the stuffy, cloistered, all-male environment in which it took place. For goodness’ sake, avoid the word “prank.” And don’t say again that you didn’t even know the word “homosexual” in 1965. Whether you viewed Lauber as a “sissy,” a “girl,” or just as some sort of nonconformist weirdo doesn’t make much difference. You and your pals terrorized and humiliated him.
Display some remorse. Talk about some of the gay people who worked for you in Massachusetts, and how you related to them. Show some humility, and some humanity.
Such a performance won’t convert any die-hard Democrats. It will, however, be noticed by independents and others who are thinking of voting for you but who already have some doubts about your character and your background. Being perceived as an out-of-touch rich doofus is something you can work on gradually.
Being perceived as an out-of-touch rich bully is a serious problem that needs addressing right now before it gets any worse.
Mitt, it’s time to learn a trick from Obama and call in Diane Sawyer. Do it today!
posted by Clare L. Pieuk at 7:31 AM
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