Now that the individual who supposedly assaulted former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on a flight from Vancouver has told his side of the story, we have one more bit of evidence about Mitt Romney’s character, and it isn’t encouraging.  Romney claimed that he told the passenger in front of him to bring his seat back up for take-off, and the man struck him. He told the flight attendant the same thing, resulting in the passenger being removed from the flight.

Now the passenger, a successful rapper named Skyler Gordy, has made a video giving his side of the story, and it is 100% more believable than Romney’s version. Gordy says that he was trying to sleep, and was startled when Romney demanded that he raise his seat. When he didn’t respond  quickly enough for Romney, the politician, Gordy says, grabbed his shoulder, and Gordy slapped it away. At that point Mrs. Romney started screaming.

Who did the flight attendants believe, the young black rapper, or the prominent, white political figure?

You are correct, sir!

A few observations:

• It wasn’t Romney ‘s job to start telling passengers to raise their seats for take-off, unless he’s auditioning to be a stewardess.

• If, as Gordy says, Romney grabbed the rapper, he committed battery, and I would have slapped his hand too.

• Why would anyone “hit” Romney just for asking him to raise his seat? I seriously question the veracity of Romney’s sequence of events.

• It isn’t easy to hit the person behind you on a flight, unless you stand up and turn around. ( I know, because I’ve wanted to hit the person behind me, more than once.) However, if the person seated behind you leans forward and grabs your shoulder, it is quite easy—you don’t even have to unbuckle your seatbelt.

I think it is significant that Gordy wasn’t arrested, which he would have been if Romney’s story were true. I think airline officials told Gordy, “We’re sorry; the guy’s an officious big-shot and we don’t need the grief. Let’s get you on another flight.” Based on his video, at least, Gordy seems like a really nice guy.

Romney, on the other hand, seems to have been playing the vile “do you have any idea who I am?” game that is usually the mark of someone who expects everyone to  kowtow to his every whim. I don’t have much to back up my feeling that Romney isn’t trustworthy; I admit it. There’s that disturbing animal cruelty story, a proven tendency to tell whoppers, and the fact that he pretended to be a liberal in Massachusetts then morphed into a  Right Wing poster boy as soon as he started running for national office—or, in the alternative, was a liberal who has been pretending to be a conservative. Who knows? It all adds up to a rebuttable presumption that the man  lacks integrity.

This incident, though we may never know what really happened, doesn’t improve my opinion of him one bit. I strongly suspect that a few more glimpses of what Mitt Romney is really like will effectively sink him as a presidential contender, and when it happens, no one will be sorry.