The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Michael Maiello's picture

    Willard Scissormitts

    By Michael Maiello on Thu, 05/10/2012 - 4:55pm | Politics

    We all did stupid things when we were young and the private preparatory academies of the type that Romney attended in the fifties and sixties were settings for all sorts of bullying and boorish behaviors and boys forced unnaturally together in search of A Separate Peace.

    Adult Romney wants tales from his high schools years to be filed away under "youthful indiscretions" and left there.  I don't blame him.  I don't even like seeing pictures of myself in high school.  I had a mullet.  Some things are best left in the recesses of our memories.

    Mitt's response to the story that he and accomplices attacked a long-haired student suspected of homosexuality and tried to cut his hair off was two-fold.  First, he says he doesn't remember the incident.  So we're supposed to believe that it wasn't important to Mitt, even if his victim remembers in enough detail to describe the events to the Washington Post.

    The second response is more, forgive me, queer.

    “I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s.”

    Okay, minor objection: if he doesn't even remember trying to cut this kid's hair off, then why is he speculating as to his own motives?  How can he remember why he did something he doesn't remember doing?

    Major objection: So, the heck what?  If he didn't try to cut the kid's hair off because he thought the kid was gay, then why did he try to cut the kid's hair off?  Is it because Mitt, who has the same Ward Cleaver haircut now that he had as a child, just can't stand nonconformists?

    If that's the case, he certainly hasn't ougrown those feelings, as his Massachusetts battles with a Lesbian, Gay and Transgender anti-bullying group show:

    “If the governor does have national aspirations, the rest of the country doesn’t buy this stuff,” said Brian Camenker, then director of the anti-gay marriage Article 8 Alliance, told the Boston Globe at the time. “The governor has to decide where he stands on some of these issues.”

    At the time, the commission’s co-chair, Kathleen Henry, defended Romney. But relations between the governor and commission collapsed in 2006, after the commission lent its name to materials promoting a long-running annual pride parade for LGBT youth that it helped organize using private funds. Romney, incensed at being officially associated with a gay pride event, threatened to dissolve the commission on the spot.

    The move came after Camenker showed Romney aides pictures of the previous parade his group had posted online that he claimed were inappropriate.

     

    ”Last year [at the parade] they had boys in fishnet stockings and high heels parading down Boylston Street,” Camenker told the Globe. ”They had boys dressed as women embracing. We presented stuff, and they were visibly sickened by what they saw. I said, basically, this group has to go.”

    Romney might play the moderate but it seems like, since his teenage years, he's had a difficult time dealing with Freaks and Geeks.  Because, you see, Mitt Romney is really this guy (a hat tip to the foresight of John Waters):

     

     

    Mitt's a square, man.  He got away with it in a bygone era, where the squares were allowed to go after the freaks.  We'd be fools to let this Chad become president.

     

     

    Topics: 
    Politics

    Comments

     

    Why should I care, If Mitt tries to cut my hair?
    He's got to reshake his Etch-a-Sketch, or be outcast ...

    by Donal on Thu, 05/10/2012 - 5:49pm

    Well done. Is Murdoch going to publish this on that IPAD news column you  do?

    From the NYT:

    .....Romney's actions seem to rise to another level--physical assault and open attempts at humiliation of closet gay kids. This is a different kind of meanness, and it rings true because of the meanness, insensitivity, and condescension we have seen in Romney on the campaign trail. He was a rich, spoiled, bigoted kid then and he's a rich spoiled, bigoted man now.//If you think this is just a harmless prank, then I rejoice for you, as you have never been treated like this. If my child had committed these actions, including leading a blind person into a door for amusement, I would be ashamed to the core of my being. These actions show a complete disregard for respect of another human being.  If my child was the victim of this action I would be absolutely devastated.//Romney doesn't remember the incident but he knows it wasn't fueled by anti-gay feelings. For the love of Pete, the guy can't even lie well. Increasingly, I think that Romney isn't really pandering, there's just no there there.//Attacking a person with scissors is not a prank or hijinx. It is assault.

    What will the Log Cabin Republicans do or say? 'Ask for another 'atta girl''?


    by NCD on Thu, 05/10/2012 - 6:33pm

    Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!  54 years ago, he was mean to me!  Barry Obama picked on me in Kindergarten School 40+ years ago and I haven't gotten over it.  Please report this to the Washington Post.  Pathetic how far they are going back to dig up dirt...won't happen with Obama who was helped get into power by associating with home grown terrrorists...it is pathetic how desperate the left is...you and the loser in the White House are in deep trouble.   

    WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 05/10/2012 - 7:34pm

    Pathetic how the right still trying to claim Obama wasn't born in Hawaii. Nice try.


    by Donal on Thu, 05/10/2012 - 7:48pm

    You're right, I'm sorry. Who was the sadist in your high school? Could be a good Supreme Court nominee.


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 05/10/2012 - 8:07pm

    Real deal paling around with terrorists, GOP style:

    John McCain on his stay with Colonel Qadaffi in August 2009, Twitter:

    John McCain

    Late evening with Col. Qadhafi at his "ranch" in Libya - interesting meeting with an interesting man.

     
    11:42 AM - 15 Aug 09 via web · Embed this Tweet
    Too bad Romney missed this cool 2009 trip to Libya, with McCain and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

     


    by NCD on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 12:51am

    This is a very disturbing report.  I think it will cost him the election.


    by moat on Thu, 05/10/2012 - 11:08pm

    Well he lost my vote. Seriously, though, right-wingers will like that he harassed gays, left-wingers will hate it, and I hope that enough independents will find it troubling to put him in a deep hole.


    by Donal on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 9:08am

    I have been checking out the "conservative" reactions to the report during the day and they have been climbing over themselves like fevered gerbils to either discredit, diminish, or divert the reporting of the event. Maybe their efforts will make the whole thing go away. But all that energy is an admission that they cannot defend the action as such. It is too cowardly to spin into a virtue. So many of the narratives in our books and films revolve around guys like that meeting their comeuppance in a spasm of rude justice.

    The part where Romney says it never occurred to him that the victim was gay is  plausible to me. Having been a young man with long hair in that time period, I remember the Romneys that surrounded me not caring about sexual orientation so much as seeing my "effeminate" appearance as a threat to their sense of privilege. People like me were screwing up the special status males should have.


    by moat on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 10:58pm

    I remember the Romneys that surrounded me not caring about sexual orientation so much as seeing my "effeminate" appearance as a threat to their sense of privilege. People like me were screwing up the special status males should have

    You call it like it was in my experience

    In Wisconsin "long hairs" were only safe in Madison and the East Side of Milwaukee (and if you were a "freak" in high school anywhere else in the state, you better not try to venture out of the protection of your tiny little tribe.)

    We didn't have that many Romney types seeking to attack, though, just construction workers and other blue collar defenders of the male crew cut ethos. (Also too any cheese state types with higher education--or of a social class of Romney type--were likely to have long sideburns or other facial hair, which made them suspect as possible liberals sympathetic to some long hair causes!)

    To this day, I am still gleeful when I see male construction workers with long hair and wearing an earring; when that started happening, it said to me: "we won!" wink


    by artappraiser on Sat, 05/12/2012 - 12:23am

    P.S. The Ed Harris character in Apollo 13 struck me as an excellent example of what the anti-long-hairs (and not-raised-by-Dr Spock) majority thought of as the ideal edjumacated male; if you had to be a highly edjumacted male, he was what you should be:

     


    by artappraiser on Sat, 05/12/2012 - 6:45am

    Your observation about the different social classes who resisted the change at that time is a window to how the conservative elites were able to find common cause with many blue collar workers when the alliance didn't make a lick of sense in pragmatic terms.

    We did win a lot of the cultural wars. In regards to the look of construction workers, it should be noted that the blue collar world changed a lot when an increasing number of liberally educated people didn't go into "professional" careers but became trades persons instead. As we say in the trade, "construction is where philosophers go to die."


    by moat on Sat, 05/12/2012 - 10:15pm

    Although I agree with most of what you say, I do have to say that I wasn't the most open-minded with respect to homosexuality when I was in high school. (Granted, I never cut anyone's hair or did any other kind of bullying, but I do recall making some disparaging comments to a friend when seeing two guys holding hands.) Perhaps the real problem here is that Romney doesn't seem to have any shame for what he did.


    by Verified Atheist on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 7:37am

    I wasn't the most open-minded either until my girlfriend gave me this book.  It turned me into a hardcore social libertarian.  I remember, while reading it, realizing that the few out kids at our school were incredibly brave.  I graduated high school in 1993, so we were tail-end Gen-X -- the generation that stopped finding "that's so gay," and acceptable substitute for "that's stupid."

    I realize this is navel-gazing, but my point is that I do remember the evolution of my thoughts on the issue.  And of course I have regrets over things I did, thought and said in high school.  I'm sure we all do.  I contend that Romney has failed to outgrow his youthful indiscretions, though.  I bet he's still a bully.  I don't think he minds "picking on the weak," or thinks that it's anything but a fact of life.  I think that when Mitt gets into a physical altercation, at 15 or 50, he wants it to be 3 on 1 in his favor.  Or, he's armed and his opponent isn't.

    It's not just that there's no sincere regret or apology here, it's that this is his character.  To quote my favorite Coen Brothers movie, "He's a balls to the wall businessman, he'll beat you any way he can."

    The New York Times Magazine recently profiled a former Romney associate (Bain colleague) and current financial supporter who is writing a book about why income disparity is a good thing (the thesis is that the slight chance at excess financial reward promotes risk taking).  This guy actually sneered at "art history majors," who he defined as people who have chosen a less competitive, less business-focused life.  The guy actually looks down on artists, writers, poets, teachers and even doctors, lawyers and accountants.  To these people, if you're not dressing the Bain way, and pursuing profit in the Bain manner, you don't have a life.

    I'm now actually convinced that Romney is dangerous.


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 8:50am

    I remember, while reading it, realizing that the few out kids at our school were incredibly brave.

    This comment brings back a memory that I recount to myself occasionally. It has been a beneficial influence in my life like that book was for you. I can't say it has made me a better person but it has helped me notice some of the better people I might have otherwise overlooked.It isn't about a gay person, it is actually a war story, sorta, but I hope you will bear with me while I go off on a tangent about a person standing bravely alone in very trying circumstances. Like most gay people must have to do too many times in their life.   
     I took basic training at Ft. Polk Louisiana in early 1967. That was the time of the biggest buildup for what was soon to become the biggest deployment in what was that period's war that was necessary to save our country from something. I forget what, but never mind that. All our Drill Sergeants had already served a deployment. Of the main five, two were complete assholes, lifers of the worst kind, and although the other three also seemed to be the same most of the time, in retrospect I think they were actually just working hard at doing the job they had been given and probably felt a real obligation to do a good job in preparing us for what they knew we could expect. Their job didn't include any coddling.
     There were quite a collection of trainees and the one featured in this reminiscence was a guy who was two inches taller than whatever the limit was [I forget those details] to fit within the physical parameters for draftees, but he had been drafted anyway. He stood with a big bow in his back though and his spine looked like it would pop through his luminescent skin. Maybe he hadn't thought to strain to stand straight at his induction physical. Maybe he had felt some obligation to answer the call. Who knows? He was extremely skinny and he was, if not actually an albino, very close to one. He was milky white except for his pink lips and pink eyes. Every joint stood out larger than every limb. And, as luck would have it, his name was Dinkins. He was also extremely shy. Dinkins seemed fated to get a world of shit and he certainly did.
     Dinkins could not initially do a correct push-up or even a sit-up and he seemed to have a very hard time screaming,"Yes Drill Seargeant", as loud as they demanded.  "I can't hear you, Dinky. Sound off you weak-ass pussy". "Yes Drill Seargeant". "Drop and give me ten you miserable momma's boy and count them off so that I can hear you".
     Everyone got quite a bit of that, but Dinkins got a lifetimes worth, it seemed, every day. The jerk Drill Sergeants made everything as humiliating as possible and the others were never easy on him. As it went on for weeks I don't remember that many trainees gave him a hard time, just a few and just a bit that I saw, but I didn't ever feel any inclination to defend him, either. If I had I probably would have stifled the urge. I have never been brave and usually didn't even notice when the time for a bit of courage was called for in social situations until the moment has long passed.  
     I could go on with more examples of the physical and mental ordeal that Dinkins went through but I'll jump to the end. Somehow Dinkins passed all the physical tests required to go on rather than to another round of basic designed for those who failed first go-round. And, though I didn't recognize it at the time, he went through the entire ordeal with a quiet dignity.
     The last day we spent in that unit before going on to our next training assignment, AIT for most, and at our last mess hall meal there, one of the Drill Sergeants called us to sitting attention and gave a short speech which I will try to describe in essence if not in exact quotes. He interrupted us about halfway though our meal and told us that he had been observing, for eight weeks, one of the strongest men he had known in his time in the army. If any of you demonstrate half the courage and character that this man has shown, he said, you will have a decent chance of being decent soldiers and coming home in one piece. The soldiers name is Dinkins [Maybe the first time one of them hadn't called him "Dinky"] and I am proud to have had him in my Platoon. Dinkins was glowing red in about a second. "The rest of you pussies sit at attention, look straight ahead, and shut the fuck up while Private Dinkins finishes his meal". The Drill Sergeant stood at parade rest until Dinkins, in a very short time, was finished.  The Drill Sergeant then asked him if he wanted seconds. "NO, DRILL SERGEANT".  "You are dismissed, good luck, soldier' He waited until Dinkins was out the door and then he said, "The rest of you pussies finish up on the double and get out of my sight".
     If I hadn't heard that short speech at the end of basic I might never have  noticed the significance of the way had Dinkins handled his situation. I was pretty wrapped up in my own feelings, I guess. At least that is the only excuse I can come up with.
     I hope  Dinkins made it and I hope life gave Mr. Dinkins some good breaks to balance the extra load it had given him to carry. And, I thank him for the example he gave us and the Drill Sergeant who made sure we noticed.
     


    by A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 2:32pm

    That's a powerful story and well told.  I imagine, in that situation, with war breathing down your neck that you were in your own thoughts and that the others were too, and maybe even a little happy that Dinkins was there to take some of the heat off.  It's hard enough in life to stop and try to consider what others are going through.  When you've been conscripted to fight somebody else's war, the task must be Herculean.


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 3:10pm

    Very cool story, like Buddhist koan or Sufi tale. Or story of Job - why me? 

    In war often the weakest link is the most dangerous - people do die, and take others with them - anything you can do to pull up the last of the pack pays off. If the last becomes the first? 

    I imagine this technique was used often - eye opener & shock for the naturally endowed, inspiration for the laggards.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 5:08pm

     


    by Richard Day on Sun, 05/13/2012 - 5:27pm