Well, with Newt out of the picture, it might net him Herman Cain’s endorsement.
Indiana Senate GOP nominee Richard Mourdock:
Proving the truth of Lugar’s Greatest. Concession statement. Ever.
Well, he did go on to add the usual shit, required for approval by the Beltway Heathers, about “both sides do it”, but still …
Maybe he’s just a fan of Rand’s nuanced characters, flowing dialogue, and totally not-that-misogynistic sex scenes.
Her sex scenes make a powerful argument for celibacy.
Maybe he, like the grand majority of us, figured halfway through that speech: “you know, I actually don’t give a hoot who this John Galt fellow is. But he sure sounds like a cunt”.
Mitt Romney asks his old classmates for help with his efforts to fog up the latest window into his soul.
So far… he’s mostly been getting a Windex-and-squeegee squad, e.g.:
To be honest, for all the reasons i wouldn’t vote for Romney, the fact that he might have been an asshole or a bully in high school doesn’t make the top 500.
I was a homophobe and a racist in high school. My school was predominantly Anglo-Australian, and my buddies and i spent plenty of time making racist comments about Vietnamese and Lebanese and Cambodian immigrants, as well as about Australian Aborigines. And anyone who was suspected, on even the flimsiest evidence, of being gay was mercilessly hounded.
I’m not proud of it, but it’s how i was. I’m a very different person now, though, and i like to think that my previous self is now only relevant in that it serves as a reminder of how i’ve changed.
The stupidity thickens with Romney’s response – first claiming not to remember the incident (er, I think one President in a generation showing early Alzheimer’s symptoms is quite enough, thank you very much…), then issuing a standard “I’m sorry if anyone was offended” non-apology.
I disagree. According to the Associated Press, he said, “I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some may have gone too far. And for that I apologize,” to Biran Kilmeade on Fox News. That’s about as close as you can get to an apology by a politician.
“I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some may have gone too far. And for that I apologize,”
As I said, a standard BS “sorry if anyone was offended” non-apology that implies that the problem is not the deed itself, but people’s allegedly excessive reactions thereto.
For me, it’s the claim of not remembering the incident that really chaps my hide. If he’s lying, that says something not very good. If its true, it says something rather more troubling. So I gather from these posts that he has abandoned that position? Well, good. Sorta. Kinda.
If he doesn’t remember, then either there’s something seriously wrong with him and his mental faculties are breaking down, or there’s something seriously wrong with him and he did that kind of stuff so often that no particular incident stands out from the background.
I wasn’t quite a homophonic rasinist, but I wouldn’t want to be judged by my conduct in high school. But then again, there were plenty of people in HS that had naturally good disposition that didn’t take part in bullying or mean-spirited shenanigans, so perhaps it does have some bearing. Maybe not enough to crack that top 500, but it’s not weightless.
I’m also not totally put off by his failure to remember. Forget high school, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a ton of dumb shit just ten years ago that, if I were suddenly confronted with, would certainly sound memorable but I’d be hesitant to claim ownership at first.
On the other hand, Obama remembered an incident of bullying (sort of, where he pushed a girl) from when he was ten. I think it reflects on his character that he remained contrite enough to put it in his memoir as a form of apology.
Best typo ever?
But then by your own admission you were one of the bullies at high school and I wonder how many of the victims out there feel the same way. Even if he’s changed, who likes the idea that the sort of person who made their life a misery in high school gets to be president?
It’s not like he’s lived a life of good deeds to make up for his earlier misdeeds.
I wasn’t a bully in the way we’re talking about here; i was a racist and a homophobe.
My racism was the sort of generalized prejudice that was never actually directed at individuals. That is, i never used racist language against a member of a minority group, or physically assaulted anyone. The extent of my racism was my mates and i complaining to one another in derogatory terms about immigrants and Aborigines, and using racist epithets to describe them among ourselves.
My homophobia was similarly non-directed; it was more of a general sense of antipathy towards the whole idea. I didn’t actually know any gay people, and to the extent that i used homophobic slurs, it was usually as a way of insulting people whom i knew were not gay. There were only a couple of people at our school who were suspected of being gay, and while they were on the receiving end of quite a bit of verbal abuse from their peers, i wasn’t involved in this because they were a few years older than me, and most of this sort of peer-group bullying occurred among actual peers, in terms of age.
My school had very little actual bullying, and i was never involved in the sort of thing that Romney is talking about here. My racism and homophobia were mainly things i shared with my like-minded peers. That doesn’t make it right, but it does mean that i was not a bully in the sense of actually inflicting physical and emotional distress on other students in my school.
He’s a Republican, and he wants America to have a Republican President. Of COURSE there’s something seriously wrong with him.
Oh, but in Republican terms, he has. He’s a Job Creator; one of those noble, self-sacrificing individuals who has stepped up to the thankless task of making our economy work. Without him, and others like him, the rest of us would be fighting over nuts and berries. When you think of how much we owe them, it’s only right that the government look for new ways to thank them, and encourage their further efforts. And who better to lead that effort than one of the Job Creators, himself?
The thing is, you remember what you were like, and you now recognize that you were wrong to act like that around your friends:
You remember.
You acknowledge.
You have changed.
You’re now a better man.
As opposed to Romeny who:
Says he does not remember.
Gave a half-assed apology if anyone was offended
Has not changed, or gained any empathy, based on his current stand on gay marriage, and his feelings towards people whose jobs were lost because of him.
Is the same man now as he was when he assaulted a fellow student.