This just in: When he was 2 months old, Mitt Romney made boom-boom in his didies!
The Washington Post, which reached its previous nadir of attempted disgraceful and irresponsible character assassination of a GOP Presidential candidate with its “Niggerhead” hit job on Gov. Rick Perry*, sunk lower still with today’s stunningly unfair attack on Mitt Romney. Reporter Jason Horowitz wrote a bottom-of the-barrel story about an incident in which Romney bullied and harassed a gay class mate when Romney was at prep school, and 17-years-old. Naturally, this was published to contrast with President Obama, finally being shamed into announcing his support of gay marriage, in order to embarrass Romney, and force him to apologize for an episode that took place nearly a half-century ago when he was legally a minor.
If you want to read this garbage, it is here. You shouldn’t want to, however. It has no relevance to Mitt Romney or his qualifications for the Presidency. Paying any attention to it at all, even if you are actively trying to torpedo Mitt, is a bright-line violation of the Golden Rule…unless, of course, you never did anything you’re now ashamed of when you were a selfish, hormone-addled, ignorant teen, and are perfectly willing to have colleagues and potential employers judge your current character on the wedgies you handed out in gym class.
In the last three days, my son, who is also 17 and barely shaving, has engaged in about five instances of ridiculous conduct that if done by anyone over the age of 25 would call his competence and sanity into question—and my son is a smart, strong, often surprisingly mature young man. Using anything Mitt Romney did as a 17-year-old to impugn his character now—short of cannibalism, rape or armed robbery— is so unfair and irresponsible that my thesaurus fails me as I heap abuse on the attempt. Some conservative zealots tried to use Michelle Obama’s senior thesis against her. That was outrageous; this is worse. They tried to use Hillary’s thesis to embarrass her, too: despicable. Yet she wrote it when she was 4 years older than Romney when he mistreated a gay kid. Recently, idiots attempted to make hay over young Barack Obama’s immoderate praise of radical Harvard Professor Derek Bell, when Obama was a student at Harvard. That was desperate and silly, but the Romney attack is worse.
I bet, if the Post really digs, that it can find an incident, maybe several, in which Child Romney treated girls horribly when he was 17. I could describe at least four such incidents that I was guilty of when I was that age, and by the standards of most of my friends, I was a perfect gentleman. I’m sure, though, that David Axelrod can spin Romney’s youthful indiscretions into proof that Republicans are waging a war on women.
The prep school story tells us nothing useful about Romney today, but it tells us a great deal about the depths the mainstream media is willing to go to grease the path to President Obama’s election, despite mea culpas about its obvious bias in 2008. And the writers and bloggers who have seized on this story to attack Romney, among them Andrew Sullivan and John Becker of the Huffington Post, have also outed themselves as utterly beneath contempt.
I’ll to stipulate that Mitt Romney was a jerk when he was a teenager. So was I, so were you, and I’m willing to bet that so was Barry Obama. Being jerks as teens is how we all learn not to be jerks as adults, with any luck.
But what excuse do Horowitz, Becker and Sullivan have for being such jerks today?
* Note: To this day, no image of the offending rock—-reputedly lying in the dirt at a camp that Perry’s father leased!—that the Post suggested called Perry’s attitudes toward race into question has ever appeared in the Post’s pages.
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Facts: Washington Post
Sources:
Graphic: Jack and Jill Childcare
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
Well said. Is there nothing these base idiots won’t do?
“I’ll to stipulate that Mitt Romney was a jerk when he was a teenager. So was I, so were you, and I’m willing to bet that so was Barry Obama. Being jerks as teens is how we all learn not to be jerks as adults, with any luck.”
The quotable Jack Marshall.
Thanks.
At about 5 a.m. this morning, I saw a “coming up next” and heard a blurb about something Mitt Romney supposedly did and it ran with a photo of him as a teenager on a morning news program (I forgot which one). I thought to myself: Unless he murdered someone, I’m pretty sure this is another ridiculous attempt to discredit a politician for something that has nothing to do with him today, and nothing to do with the office he is running for. I shut the television off because I had to get ready for work. Clearly, I didn’t miss anything.
I wrote a 6-paragraph response which was swallowed by the ether. No time now to re-construct it. The gist: I agree that the story was unfair, but the Romney campaign’s response is also revealingly Clintonesque, and I don’t mean that in a good way. My take on that angle, written essentially concurrently with your piece,here.
I didn’t much like Mitt’s camps’ response, just as Herman Cain’s response to the Politico hit job was less than optimal. But at some point we have to give a pass to politicians who don’t puzzle out the perfect handling of a bogus hit job. That’s how the media justifies doing this now: “But see how badly he responded?” So it’s worth it, right? Let’s see—if they shrug it off, they are making the act seem trivial, and look callous. If they protest, they “protest too much”, methinks. If they ignore the accusation, it keeps on going, with people asking, why didn’t he deny it? If they try to explain it, they give it weight.
The fact that it’s a perfect trap doesn’t mean we should allow the media to get away with it. I’m sorry, but I give everyone—Mitt, Hillary, et all—a complete pass, unless Mitt had said something like, “Damn straight, and I’d do the same thing to the little queer today!”
I read your post, and I may post a rebuttal, in addition to my response on your blog. I could hardly disagree more.
Did you see that the Post has quietly “corrected” the story? http://drawandstrike.blogspot.com/2012/05/washington-post-caught-making-sht-up.html?showComment=1336705162167#c7912732307247577026
Thinking back to the person that I was when I was a teenager, I am always frustrated by statements to the effect that it’s a natural consequence of adolescence that one is immature, irresponsible, self-centered, and base. I wasn’t. I was a much more respectable young man then than I am now. I may well have been in a small minority, but that doesn’t excuse talking about stages of life as if they fit established, immutable patterns. To say that they do is stereotyping, the same as if blanket statements are applied to any other demographic.
If it’s wrong to judge someone on the basis of former actions or statements, it’s wrong because of how long ago it was, not because of how old they were at the time. It wouldn’t be wrong to judge a 22 year old Mitt Romney’s character on the basis of what he did when he was 17, even though he was an adolescent at one stage and not the other.
You’re kidding.
I agree that length of time is also a good reason to invalidate the significance of evidence of misconduct, but are you seriously suggesting that maturity is irrelevant? Where would you draw the line for yourself, Ed? If not at 18, or 21, where—15? 12? 7? 2?
Some of the most responsible, trustworthy adults I know were wild, sometimes violent, sociopathic teens. Heaps of research confirm the conclusion that kids have unfinished brain chemistry, and we all know that experience is the best teacher. This isn’t stereotyping, and the fact that some people reach their adult level of responsibility and ethical instincts at 10 doesn’t mean we have to ignore the more common pattern.
Where would you draw the line? It’s an instance of vagueness paradox whether you accept adolescence as a necessary indicator of immaturity or you don’t. It’s not as though there’s a switch that gets flipped on your eighteenth birthday which changes your setting from wild child to responsible adult. Of course brain chemistry is still in development during adolescence, but those natural patterns aren’t the sole indicators of personality. Part of who you were as a kid is going to carry over into your young adulthood. Some of it is going to follow you throughout your life.
Where would I draw the line for myself? I wouldn’t. If I did anything truly sociopathic as a child, I’ll answer for it now. I’m prepared to either make an argument on the basis of more recent history for why I’m not that person anymore, or else accept that what it indicates might not have gone away when I stopped being a child. Saying “I was a kid; kids are stupid” doesn’t say anything about whether I’m stupid as an adult. If that’s a catchall excuse, did Damien from The Omen get to use it when he grew up and became a politician played by Sam Neil? (I haven’t seen those sequels, so maybe.)
I’d draw the line after I was out of dorms, out from the protection of my parents, living on my own, earning my own money, fully responsible for my own actions, having personal relationships that are tested, coping with the real world. Nobody is trustworthy until that point. There are other lines of demarcation as well—like stopping the use of drugs, or alcoholic recovery, or epiphanal experiences. Leaving the womb of school, especially prep school, is an obvious one.
Nit-picking natterers. So Mitt Romney is an unreformed hate criminal. His administration would therefore be overpopulated with more of them, and give the most power to the most brutal of them. Right.
My only quibble with an otherwise excellent post is your suggestion Hillary’s thesis is out of bounds. It’s not. When someone seeking high office has done “scholarship” on the rabble rousing street mob tactics of Saul Alinsky, under the title “There is Only the Fight” – she owes the republic an explanation. btw, Associating herself with BHO’s Alinsky soaked administration, and by extension the #occupy mob, makes the thesis a career killer. Guaranteed.
I think, if anything, a college thesis is LESS legitimate to bring up in the context of judging an adult’s career or character. A thesis is an advocacy piece: you might as well hold a lawyer’s brief against him. In addition to the fact that a college thesis is written when a young man or woman is barely 21, it is subject to outside influence. Thesis advisors shape what your position is…you are sometimes told that a particular position is risky given the political tilt of Department or a campus. Admiring Saul Alinsky in the throes of the tie-died Sixties deserves a permanent pass—I was there, man, and it was crazy, especially at Wellesley.I dated some of those women, and they were all ready to set up communes and make Ho Chi Minh President, once they came down off the ceiling and stopped singing “White Rabbit.”
Then she should offer your defense and see if it flies, not keep it under lock and key (until her husband left office.) Where’s all the transparency, man? btw – Congratulations on being there, I imagine it was a lot of fun. 😉
1) Unfair and irrelevant is unfair and irrelevant.
2) The Sixties were not fun, and we suffer because of them still. Good music, though.
Wow, you *are* serious about your debate ethics. I respect “what you is what you get” people. Yes, we can definitely agree the music was by far the best part of th 60’s. Good stuff on the sidebar montages – vaguely psychedelic. (60s!).