Once Again, the Blogosphere Gets a Scoop the MSM Missed... By Reading Obama’s Books

Update: Oh my, there seems to be a discrepancy in the story told by one of the witnesses.

While we are waiting to talk about my big story (trust me, this is going to be a blockbuster) I am going to pay attention to other news.

So a few weeks back we had the unbelievable silliness of talking about how the candidates treated their dogs.  First, we learned that Mitt Romeny put his dog on top of a car in a pet carrier for a drive, because the car was full.  A little stupid, yes, but kind of a silly thing to worry about when the debt is $15 trillion and counting.  Then Jim Treacher did some deep investigative journalism in the form of reading Obama’s book, and discovered that he actually ate a dog.  Which seems kind of worse, and indeed led to great deal of Obama-ate-a-dog jokes.  And then to top it all off, we then discovered that Romney actually saved a family from drowning, including their dog.

And so now today we get the Washington Post doing an in-depth investigation into how Romney acted in high school, giving us this shocking story:

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

So first, I am sure the family of the late John Lauber (he died in 2004) really appreciates the whole world knowing that he might have been gay.  For all we know he could have been going through a phase and married a woman and had a dozen children by now.  So let’s thank the Washington Post for respecting his privacy...

Still, turning to Romney’s behavior, of course what he did was wrong, and mean.  And I am sure Obama never did anything as bad as...

Oh, except Obama bullied a girl.  Yes, really, according to Talk of the Times.  And how did these internet sleuths discover this...?

Come on, you read the headline, right?  By reading Obama’s books (and I verified the quote on Amazon.com):

That is from Dreams of My Father, of course.

The reality is this.  We do not spring forth from the head of Zeus as fully-formed adults.  We go through a period of life called “childhood” in which we make mistakes and we learn.  Things like decency, compassion, kindness, all of those things are learned, and not something we figure out just by the virtue of being born.  There is a process called maturing and there are often speed bumps along the way.

Don’t believe me?  Okay, who is the coolest basketball player in History?  Michael Jordan, right?  I mean the man had such grace and power you would swear that he had a gravity belt:

And off court he was the definition of cool—always dressing very sharp (we are overlooking his facial hair for now).  And I am sure he was always an awesome guy, right?  Right?

Yeah, and there’s a whole gallery of this stuff.  Oy vey.  (By the way, Cracked, can we stop calling every black person who happens to be a nerd “Urkel?” The conscious “race”-matching is creepy.)

And you know that brooding Eminem guy?  This was him in high school:

We were all dorks once.  Even when we thought we were cool, we were dorks.  Look at the teenagers in The Karate Kid:

Ralph Macchio, allegedly the dork in the movie, actually comes off looking cooler in hindsight than most of the guys beating him up.  We have to recognize that there is a God-given right to be young and stupid at some point in your life and give both Obama and Romney a pass on this bullying.

But if we are going to play this game, then I see your Romney bullying story and raise you one #ObamaBulliedAGirl.

Or at least I thought we should ignore what they did as teenagers.  Then I found out something and I will share it with you.  Below the fold I am going to put a truly shocking photograph of Romney as a teenager that proves once and for all that he should never be president.  Look at your own risk:

Let’s keep our eye on the ball, people.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.