Posted on 05/11/2012 8:38:01 PM PDT by Qbert
The ombudsman is being bombarded by input from readers, via e-mail and phone calls, about the story that Post reporter Jason Horowitz wrote on Mitt Romney’s teenage years at the prestigious Cranbrook School in Michigan.
The story leads with an anecdote about Romney and some of his friends in his dormitory tackling and pinning to the ground an unpopular classmate and forcibly cutting off his bleached-blond, longish hair. The boy, John Lauber, was frightened and in tears, Horowitz explained, and the boy turned out to be gay.
The rest of the deeply reported story provides extensive context to Romney’s years there, what the school was like, where Romney fit in the boys’ hierarchy, and the fact that a lot of people liked the son of Michigan’s then-governor, George Romney.
Conservative Web sites have criticized the piece on several grounds.
The first is that The Post changed the text of one paragraph from the online version published on Thursday to the print version published on Friday without telling readers. It’s a description of how one of Romney’s high school friends, Stu White, felt after hearing about the hair-cutting prank. White was not present at the prank.
[Snip]
The Post changed the story after talking to White again and discovering that White only learned of the prank in recent weeks after being told of it by a Cranbrook classmate.
[Snip]
This part of Horowitz’s story is tangential at best. It is only about how one person, who was not an eyewitness, felt about the incident.
[Snip]
“Our intention with this story and future stories about both Mitt Romney and President Obama is to give people the fullest possible portrait of the men who are running for president. We will continue to explore their biographies, their decision-making, and their full lives.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Please that is ridiculous I do not think it was violent
cutting someones hair and I think if he apologized it is a good thing. Have you even done any thing 40 or 50 years ago that maybe you might think it in bad taste now? I know
for myself I did some things in my early teens that I thought were funny but as I look back at them they were not so nice or funny.
I made a crank phone call to a funeral home and said that my husband had died and they came out to the address I gave them it was the neighbors across the street from my Grandma’s house I got in big trouble for that but I thought it was funny I was 13 and I am sorry I did that now.
A haircut really isn’t “violence” in my book.
Mister, if you don’t think that a group taking down someone they don’t like, and doing it violently enough to succeed in cutting off their hair isn’t violent, then try to to imagine yourself convincing a courtroom that it was really just meaningless pranking to all involved, and the victim and the jury should think of it as like a prank call to a funeral home.
If you think that it would be easy and non violent for me to shave your head against your will, because I didn’t like you, then I will accept your self description.
Everybody does dumb things when they are 15. We all grow up. If he did it recently then I can see the point in even bring it up.
We will continue to explore their biographies, their decision-making, and their full lives.”...Should’ve done that four years ago.....RIIIIIIGHT.
Some older guys gave me a “pinkbelly” one time. I grew and got strong and gave three of them a 2x 4 two years later.
Also, there’s a dumb idea out there that everyone remembers every “bad” thing they’ve ever done. In my experience, people often forget when they have committed an unsensitive or rude act. They are embarrassed about it and suppress it in their brains.
That said, I think this whole story is a bunch of nonsense.
Help me find the quote where his head was shaved.
Gee, Mr. Pexton, would it have been too much for this "deeply sourced" article to report how White was told about it; could it have been one of the "Democratic leaning" sources was suborning an account that he could feed to the Washington Post? "Hey, Stu, you remember the time Mitt bullied that freak, don't you?" "no." "Sure you do, Stu; Tom, Dick and Harry remember just like it was yesterday..yada,yada."
Bottom line - this story is not going to change anyone’s vote. Romney haters will still hate Romney and others will harbor serious doubts about whether this ever happened given the fact that the family does not recall the incident and the incident described would be remembered by family.
Aside from that, the real bully of this story is the Washington Post. The sister is tearful when questioned and furious that her brother has been used to further an agenda. Rather than backing off the story, the Post doubles down on it with no regard whatsoever to the pain they are causing to the family of this young man. He has been dead since 2004 and the Post uses him and his family shamelessly to further their own liberal agenda. SICKENING!
The rats really are desperate.
What about Obama admitting to bullying and hitting an unpopular little black girl that he wrote about in his first book. Who attacks a girl? That tells me more about Obama’s character than the Romney incident. Where was this story and subsequent investigaton by WAPO and other liberal papers. There was none.
What about Obama admitting to bullying and hitting an unpopular little black girl that he wrote about in his first book. Who attacks a girl? That tells me more about Obama’s character than the Romney incident. Where was this story and subsequent investigaton by WAPO and other liberal papers. There was none.
Romney apologized, so there IS truth about the story.
Romney harassed a passenger on JETBlue a few years
ago, too. Then there are the FAKE BADGES and his
other lies and myths.
Compared to the myths, this event was relatively accurate.
Give it a break.
Romney was CHOSEN for you because he negates
everything problematical about the undocumented IMAM.
Bad governing.
Ineligibility.
RomneyCARE/ObamaCARE
Flipflopping
TARP
Sharia
Ego off-planet
Thinks he is a ‘god’.
History of covering up fraud
... plus Romney has a few other negatives of his own.
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