Mitt Romney’s bullying evoked a painful memory within John Manchester, as well as concern for the message we send by electing a bully as President.
Originally appeared at Open Salon
I try to steer clear of politics on my blog. With all the political discussion raging online, I’m afraid all I have to contribute is heat, and not much light.
But the recent revelation that Mitt Romney was a bully in prep school—straddling a gay kid as he hacked off his long blond hair, and in another incident leading a blind man crashing into a door—has opened an old wound. This is a case where “The personal is political.”
First the personal. The same year—1965—that Romney was having his fun, I was the victim of bullies on several occasions in my first months at boarding school as a new sophomore. Here’s how I wrote about one incident in my memoir:
One of my first days at school I was looking for a friend from my hometown when I got lost. I wandered down a strange hall. A door flew open and a tall swarthy guy stormed out and ran into me. He glared at me, saying, “Get the fuck off my hall. I don’t ever want to see you here again.”
A few nights later I was awakened by my door slamming open. The swarthy guy headed a gang that leered down at me in bed. How he found out who I was, where I lived, I’ll never know. The guy said, “You stink. We’re giving you a shower.”
“Hey, I take a shower every day…” I didn’t stink. No, this was about that thing I’d heard of, where they hold you under water, alternately scalding and freezing you.
They grabbed me and I flailed like a madman. But five guys were too many. On our way out the door I grabbed my guitar and hugged it to my chest as they hustled me down the hall to the bathroom. My reasoning being that they might harm me but would not risk getting in trouble by wrecking my property.
I was right, because when they got me into the bathroom the leader of the gang fought with me over it: “Give me that guitar, douchebag!” Something popped in my left shoulder, with a searing pain, and he yanked it away. They dunked me in the water. To my relief it was only cold.
I didn’t know my shoulder had been permanently damaged. That guy had torn tendons that were still forming. A few years later the shoulder would begin dislocating, and still troubles me.
♦◊♦
Now what Mitt Romney inflicted in cutting off a boy’s hair was arguably milder than what was done to me. That kid’s hair grew back. Then again, I wasn’t gay. I don’t imagine he ever forgot that incident. For my part, I remember that night in the showers every time my shoulder hurts, and three times a week as I do the same boring regimen of exercises to keep it from dislocating again. Behind my physical pain is a terrible feeling—that of having been deemed an outcast.
One of our deepest characteristics as humans is the need to belong to the group. It’s accompanied by a terror of being ostracized from it. That fear is atavistic, and existential. There was a time when being cast from your place around the campfire meant you would die—to starve, or be devoured by wild animals.
Romney’s fellow perpetrators—who unlike him, feel great remorse at the thing he claims not to remember doing—report that he was “incensed” by the gay kid’s long bleached hair. When I recall the face of my attacker, it was enraged. By what? The fact that I was the new kid in school? That I was the smallest in my dorm? Was it because my pants didn’t quite fit? Or was it that I didn’t own a pair of Bass Weejuns?
In order to comprehend this rage at someone you don’t know, who’s done nothing to you personally, you have to return to that campfire a thousand generations ago. Perhaps it was a matter of the small, the weak, the weird being their own existential threat to the community—bodies that couldn’t pull their weight with mouths no one could afford to feed. In that context that rage makes a kind of sense—a leader putting on a brave and angry face for a group terrified for their own survival.
We don’t live in caves any more. Legions of the small, the weak, the weird—or just new in school—survived bullying. They grew up to become assets to society.
The terrible thing is that atavistic impulses live in the victims of bullying as well as the perpetrators. We feel inside that we deserve it, that we have been rightfully punished for not being proper members of the group.
♦◊♦
Gays have seen almost unimaginable progress since the 60s. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the victims of bullying. In 2003 another prestigious prep school—St. Paul’s—saw an incident in which a student was repeatedly sodomized by a gang wielding a hockey stick. What horrified me was how the parents and the school circled the wagons, defending the culprits, saying it was nothing, just “boys being boys.” Perhaps they were doing more than covering up a crime. Maybe they believe we as a society still need these rituals of ostrasization.
If Mitt Romney wins the election he will be the second Republican president in a row to have been a bully in his youth – George Bush burned pledges with cigarettes when he headed his college fraternity. And this is no coincidence. There are many voters who in these fearful times want a big guy as president who’s going to lead the charge to cast out everyone who’s not like “us” – the poor, the sick, immigrants, those with pants too short or the wrong shoes.
I honestly don’t care what motivates bullies—whether they’re throwbacks to the caveman, “boys being boys,” or plain psychopaths. I just want the bullying to stop.
Many outraged by Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky wondered what message it sent to the young. Some think it’s led to an acceptance of oral sex among teeagers. Maybe it has. It’s not a subject I much care about one way or the other.
♦◊♦
I do care about having another president who’s a bully. I imagine all those young bullies out there looking up to President Romney and thinking—Hey, maybe if I cut that kid’s hair off, sodomize that kid with a baseball bat, dislocate a joint or two—really mess someone up—I might make the grade, grow up to be President of the United States!
The choice in November could not be clearer. There’s the man who risked the election by coming out in favor of gay marriage, a major step in welcoming a once shunned group into the circle around the campfire. Then there’s the guy who strapped the family dog to the car roof, who led a blind man into a door, who held down a screaming boy and cut off his hair, just because he was different. Just because he could.
John Manchester made a living as a composer for 30 years. Now he he writes for a numer of online publications, including Salon.com. His memoir of his father and the 1960s, Escaping the Giant, and his thriller You Can’t Write About Me can be previewed at johnkmanchester.com.
Photo Credits: AP, Gerald Herbert/AP
About John Manchester
Here’s an author who clearly lets his sensitivities about one topic and ambivalence of another dictate his views and voting. He’s a product of his emotional reactions. He doesn’t react strongly to the risk of sending youth the message of infidelity and honesty–ala Clinton, but he has a strong reaction to a leader who has bullied.
That’s fine. We all react to different things differently. I just wish he’d be a bit more self-aware and not take his reactions so seriously as they send him on a tizzy escaping reason.
First, Romney’s not “a bully” anymore than I am “a White” or Neil Patrick Harris is “a gay”. But the defining label sure lets us know how he sees Romney.
Second, Obama didn’t evolve, and I’m sure the author knows this. Obama vocally supported gay marriage in 1996. He only recently had the guts to speak up for equality because his VP paved the way.
It’s unknown how Romney will handle foreign policy, and it’s unfortunate to consider that he’d probably be aggressive as President Obama. But nonetheless, it’s amazing to me that people like this author will cry out about Romney’s past bullying while saying absolutely nothing about the hundreds of children and adult civilians killed by Obama’s drones.
Sometimes, reactions to issues like the ones addressed by the author are so loud that they drown out the bigger ones like, say, bombing kids and a $15 trillion deficit.
Brandon,
Very well put.
This author is not concerned with economic policy, with foreign policy, with farm subsidies, with the national debt, veterans affairs, public education, or any one of a million other problems that our nation must seriously consider.
He’s just going to vote with his emotions.
I hope the rest of us, regardless of who we vote for, vote with our heads instead.
God forbid a man should have EMOTIONS! Romney, as we see, has none. His chuckling about his torture of an innocent person, tells us exactly what he is.
If you seek to silence the bullied and side with the bully? You are part of the problem. I can think of no greater insult.
Thanks for a thoughtful and honest piece, John.
Does Romney’s efforts to find the missing daughter of his employee at Bain Capital tell us anything about who he is?
Cause emotions are silly!!!!
Our brains are all one thing you know. We aren’t vulcans. We make decisions about policy in as much part from our we react mentally (with emotion) to things as not.
I get it Mike L. people that were bullied should just suck it up.
But if people are gonna fuss about the sexual moral character of Clinton, they should damn well fuss about the bullying moral character of Romney. Either you act in a way of honor (and by the way, I don’t think Clinton acted honorably) or you don’t care so long as their policies get you yours, right?
Who cares if a leader gets us into aimless wars so long as your taxes go down huh?
“But if people are gonna fuss about the sexual moral character of Clinton, they should damn well fuss about the bullying moral character of Romney.”
Why isn’t it possible that it was wrong to fuss Clinton, just as it’s now wrong to look at the Romney’s childhood?
Are we saying that two wrongs make a right? That because people behaved inappropriately over Clinton’s sex life we should behave just as inappropriately over every political candidate?
Is it that surprising that I really wanted the whole Clinton scandal to go away as a worthless waste of time? Do you really need everyone to conform to your previous ideas about “Democrat” and “Republican”? You line on “aimless wars” and “taxes go down” seems to suggest as much.
It is of course possible. When do we react though? When is it actually a good idea and just decision to raise questions about a candidate’s ethics and leadership potential?
Given that I”m cynical enough to believe all politicians (even the ones I voted for) are either in the pocket of a larger power, or ready to lie,cheat and political theater their way into office, I don’t know it matters except for the messages it sends to us “little people.” THus, a politician bullying/cheating and then winning lends the impression that winners get to bully/cheat at some point.
Power has it’s benefits.
I just do not understand why we would ever accept form over substance.
What has had the larger and more lasting effect from the Clinton administration: the marital infidelity or the welfare reform legislation?
Did Bush’s lies about Iraq diminish the lasting impact of No Child Left Behind? What about the lasting effect of his tax cuts?
Is there any doubt that the lasting effect of Obama’s first term will be the healthcare reform bill? As a result, what matters more, the campaign promise to pursue healthcare reform, or the admission of cocaine use some two decades earlier?
In all of these cases, specific policies, which were explicitly campaigned for, had huge and lasting impacts.that arguably outweighed any sort of moral issues that may have arisen. Even in the case of Bush, where the moral problem has had a huge and lasting impact, this has not diminished the impact of the campaigned for legislation.
As a result, I just don’t see why we are looking at non-policy issues. When I look at past terms, policy issues are what have effected peoples lives, and continue to impact them to this day.
To Brandon and Mike L above,
I’m afraid neither of you read my article very carefully. I never said who I was going to vote for, only that the choice was clear.
That being said, I doubt that either of you has sustained a permanent injury while staring into a face very similar to that of Mr. Romney above. Add in the dog and the blind man, and a clear pattern emerges as to who he is. Given how his party believes in handling the powerless and needy, it doesn’t take much to extrapolate how he would address their concerns. Are these just emotions I’m expressing?
“Are these just emotions I’m expressing?”
Yes John, they are. We can see this when you write a sentence like: “I doubt that either of you has sustained a permanent injury while staring into a face very similar to that of Mr. Romney above.”
When we vote for a president we need to look at the policies that the candidate is likely to support, not the wrongs we have suffered at the hands of completely different people. Emotions are what make it so hard for you to see this.
To dismiss emotions is exactly the problem in politics. Emotions are everything. How can I trust a man who jokes about the pain he put others through? That isn’t being tough, that’s being a bastard, a person devoid of a heart, a person who’s replaced their emotions with cold hard cash and pretends it makes it ok.
You ignore the fundamentals of politics by ignoring the emotional capacity for a candidate. Policies are worthless in today’s age due to party politics, any man can make a claim to do something when he’s not even in a position to do it. It’s easy to be in the shadow of government. When you get in power, all those policies people spout are redundant because you cant impliment them because of bipartisanship or other political reasons. The emotional integrity of a person is paramount when the real decisions have to made because the real decisions are the unplanned ones, the one where you have no warning, ones which a president will have to make regularly. These decisions define them and if they are emotional cold they will be caught out because they won’t understand the effects of their actions beyond what’s written on a spreadsheet. People can forget about financial hardship, but never forget a bully.
Yes. “The emotional integrity of a person is paramount when the real decisions have to made because the real decisions are the unplanned ones, the one where you have no warning, ones which a president will have to make regularly.”
This.
William,
Presidents Obama and Bush have demonstrated that your sentiments are 100% wrong.
Obama enacted healthcare reform, just as he said he would. To date this is still probably the biggest effect his presidency has had on the nation. Bush enacted No Child Left Behind, which educators continue to complain about to this day.
The policies that presidential candidates campaign on can and do get implemented. They often change the nation (as was the case with healthcare reform). We need to focus on this going in.
Finally, I will point out that ideas like “emotional integrity” are usually how demagogues get elected (Hugo Chavez specifically comes to mind). When people vote with their hearts instead of their heads they have not thought about the consequences.
“Emotions are everything. ”
This kind of mentality in politics terrifies me. Emotions aren’t rational. They vary from person to person, and there is nothing to ensure they are at an appropriate level for the situation. For example, studies have shown that despite the fact men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime in general (by a fairly large margin), women are far more likely to be afraid they will be victimized by violence (and this includes crimes other than rape, like muggings. The reverse is true with property crimes, with men fearing more and women being greater victims). To claim that emotion is everything tells us we should act upon the women’s fears, such as by enacting a violence against women act, and to ignore the potetial discrimination and harm that can be found in those acts for the sole reason that “it makes women feel better”. Never mind that a mouse, spider or clown can terrify someone, so fear alone really shouldn’t be an indicator of policy.
so the idea that emotions are “everything” is a dangerous mindset that I can never agree with, especially in politics.
And if we all could be Vulcan, we could deal with a separation of emotional and rationality. You just used the word terrified. Emotion about this post. Emotions are in everything we do. Even if we think we are separating them I”m not sure we do.
Sure, we may not fully separate from emotions, but shouldn’t we try?
Racism, sexism, classism, etc. are all based on emotional reactions. Should we just throw up our hands and say “Welp, we’ll never be rid of these emotions, might as well discriminate!”?
Or is it maybe better for all of is when we try to separate emotions out of important decisions wherever and whenever possible?
How do we do so? Is it even possible? Are there emotions underlying your post to me and mine to yours? Curiosity, is that an emotion?
You really seem to be trying to create a straw man here. The topic of this article is about identifying our “choice” for president. When people vote with their emotions we end up with bad results.
Do you really think Bush would have gotten a second term if statements like “The Patriot Act is necessary to keep you safe,” didn’t cause people to vote with their emotions?
This article is little different: it picks up on a current moral panic and tells us this should determine our choice for president. Policies, platform, voting records, you can forget those, just get scared and vote that fear.
Sounds like you agree with some of Collin’s assertions about the intelligence of voters. I don’t like Romney’s policies. Then again, I don’t believe that either side is looking out for my best interest financially.
I don’t have time tonight to do much debating, but perhaps tomorrow.
Julie, you were the one who agreed with Collin, not me. People can vote with their emotions and still be intelligent rational people. All that it means is that, at the time of voting, the information they had led them to believe that they made the best choice they could.
However, as with anything else, we need to ask ourselves tough questions, like: what kind of information did we rely on as an electorate when we voted for Bush, and is that a kind of information we want to rely on again?
Actually Mike, I agreed with two of his points. I never specified which ones. I have a kinder view of the general populace than Collin, probably because my IQ is 140, and far less than his.
I believe people can be manipulated by fear, of course. And I think looking at policies and what one believes is vital in terms of making decisions.
However, I don’t think that emotion and rationality can be precisely divided. I believe that emotions weave themselves into beliefs and we “feel” the truth of things as much as we try to interpret them. We can only work so hard to get to that rational place.
We also have to look at what information we have and is it providing confirmation bias. Fox news watchers. Are they hearing the truth truth, or the emotional truth that confirms their fears? In this case, I can see were Collin is going. Many of my relatives won’t watch another station and think the prez is a terrrist, or at least from a country that supports them. No rational will change their minds.
Also, do we vote on policies only? Policies and values? Are emotions part of values? What about character? I do see a reason to look for character in leaders, teachers as well as their ability to work rationally. Perhaps that makes me too emotional, but I’d like to think I observe and read from multiple outlets on the net, news, and other places, and make decent decisions using all of my intelligence, and I do think that emotional intelligence is part of how our brain works.
I’m sorry Mike, I’m exhausted from a week’s worth of festival producing, and still have an event to host tonight. I’m probably not firing at all cylinders.
I’m aware I used the word terrified, I don’t discount that emotions are important, but to assert “emotions are everything”, as in the beginning and the end and everything in between, that IS terrifying. And yet, despite my terror, I am willing to discuss why I find it terrifying, I am able to give reason to my fears. And to try and make my point so others can see it. But to assert emotion is everything is to remove reason entirely (this is even worst that the assertion that emotions must be utterly removed, because it places the individuals subjective and irrational expectations above the desires and rights of others, as we see regularly with various women’s rights radicals and exploiters, a particular example would be the restraining order)
I do not mean they are more important than reason or are the end all be all. I mean they embue all our thoughts regardless of how we think we separate ourselves. More than we think anyway.
“I do not mean they are more important than reason or are the end all be all.”
Sorry Julie, but did you not see the line I quoted at the beginning of my post? The assertion “emotions are everything” is not something I’m attributing to you, not something I am asserting you said. It IS something someone else said, and THAT is what I was opposing.
The fact I acknowledge that kind of attitude terrifies me should have given you a clue that I don’t dismiss emotions completely, but instead you seemed to see me as clueless to my own words, needing to point out my use of emotion as if I’m not even self aware enough to know “i’m terrified” is an expression of emotion, all the while not even acknowledging that I was originally replying to someone other than you. Emotions encourages me to do what I do, but reason determines if and how I do it, and to what degree.
I wasn’t attacking you. Apologies regardless, but I wasn’t. I was expanding on my thoughts.
Today I’m a 41 year old media professional at Director level. I’m confident, assured, assertive. Maybe even too much so. I’m also gay and out. 30 years ago I was just a kid growing up outside Glasgow, Scotland. An area with a very ingrained culture of machismo. I took a lot of flak at school, mostly verbal about the fact I was studious, and I guess a little but timid and effeminate. I was also in the Boy Scouts. I didn’t really enjoy it but felt I needed to show to my father that I was not an outsider, and a man-in-development. Mostly I was tolerated, but I remember one camp, when all the boys spent the night out bivouac-ing that the boys, the popular ones who were ok, and the bullies who were more sadistic, found my bivouac and urinated on me. I never told anyone of that experience for another 25 years, until, in counselling regarding my feelings of alienation, that I think in truth ALL men harbour in some form however convincing their front, I recounted the shame and despair, of many small incidents, concentrated into that one incident. Bullying is about power. Generally it’s an attempt by someone to demonstrate power to themselves where inwardly they fear the don’t have it. It’s also intoxicating and addictive, and ultimately destructive. The bully is invariably a failure, and their bullying an attempt to offset that realisation.
There are those who will blow off Romney’s behavior as a high school senior and try to find means of minimizing it. More than just his behavior as a young man, I look to see if his behavior has evolved or matured over the years. So, how did he react when the story came out? First, he and his people lied and claimed it never occurred. Then, when they saw that there were plenty of reputable people willing to verify the story, even to the point of guiltily admitting they were a part of it, he attempted to minimize it, claiming that it was a prank and hoping no one was offended. Then he claimed that he didn’t remember the incident but that he didn’t know at the time that the younger, smaller boy was gay. (Man doesn’t seem to understand he twisted himself up in that lie.) The point is, Romney did not mature, did not learn empathy and did not learn to take responsibility for his actions or their consequences. And there’s no reason to believe that the pattern he shows us as a young man and later as a presidential candidate will change radically if he becomes president.
John, was the bully in your case ever disciplined? What happened to him?
It’s mendacious to accuse the author of using emotion as his sole source of political decision. I’m sure there is much more to him as an individual than just this story. Dismissing facts because they inspire an emotional response in the author is also disingenuous. The story is clearly about values which is part of how individuals make decisions. While a politician may have many other influences on their decision making process than average citizens, in the end their values matter. Clearly, some don’t have the same value set as the author which doesn’t invalidate his opinion. It’s a common argument made by conservative individuals that their liberal opponents are emotional beings instead of logical beings which is a complete fallacy. Conservative rallies are just as emotional as liberal ones. It’s just that the emotions expressed are different for different subjects. Besides, being able to project a detached and pseudo-logical demeanour doesn’t make an individual emotionless or logical. On a purely anecdotally point, dismissive attitudes seem to me to be a trait of the narrow-minded no matter what political persuasion.
Rene,
I am sorry to report that at the time I told no one about what was done to me that night. I was afraid that telling the senior proctors in charge of my dorm might bring worse things down on me. And I was ashamed to tell my parents, that it would be showing weakness to complain. And I believed I somehow deserved it.
Writing that it sounds crazy, but I know I was far from alone in keeping silence. I doubt Romney’s victim told anyone. It was just not done.
As to the culprit in my case, I never forgot his name. I looked him up through the alumni office at my school, and found he was “welling wine futures.” Perfect.
This is the whole problem. You wouldn’t have been believed, you would have been shamed for not being strong enough, this is the whole issue.
It’s so fucking toxic I don’t know what to think. I’m so outraged at the experiences I’m here here.
And anyone who can’t understand how toxic it is, is part of the problem in my opinion. It’s why we have a society where people think that if it doesn’t help them, it’s shit, that everything is zero sum, that torturing the enemy is ok, that kids need to toughen up, that greed is good, that corporations can just lay off entire middle classes and monsanto can make it illegal for farmers to use their own grains, that celebrity gossip has gotten sadistic and mercenary, that socialized services are for weaklings, and why so many google hits come up regarding was our past President a sociopath.
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=was+bush+a+sociopath&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
We live in a society that doesn’t mind meanness. And we think those that mind it, are weaklings. Man, it’s so toxic and I see Romney’s chuckle and I dont’ remember as a huge part of it.
I don’t see him as a force for less meanness in the world. I’m sure folks will have kind things to say to this comment.
John, don’t apologize. you and I are of similar age and during that time we were taught not to speak up. Thus, a lot of children were bullied and abused and stayed silent. I was one as well.
Luckily, we know now that if we have to give children the ability to understand that they have the right to not merely endure bullying and that bullying is not acceptable. It’s the sign of a sociopathic personality. And, in some cases, it’s a crime.
Romney is not suited for the White House, but not because of his bullying history as a teen. He’s arrogant, he’s clueless, and he’s appallingly indifferent to the problems of mainstream America–THOSE are reasons to reject the Mitt Romney of today. But there’s no sign that continues to be the bully he was back then.
We know what a bully in the Oval Office looks like: G.W. Bush gave ample evidence of how a grownup bully acts and talks. Romney’s not showing any of those traits today. Sadly for him, he’s showing a lot of even worse ones.
All I see is a lot of extraverts and their obsessions: fitting into the hive mind, keeping their violent boundaries against anyone who is “Not One of Us,” constantly measuring how close they are to the accepted group standard, fearful of deviating from the ideology of the collective. Sure, maybe this is a “human thing.” I tend to think it’s a particular “kind of human” thing.
Any introverted bullies who beat up weaker people in order to be left alone? Seems unlikely. Seems more common that bullies are people who want to make a particular social statement or establish some sort of position within a group.
My memories of youth is that bullying tended to be a group activity, very rarely the work of an individual bully operating solo. There was far less reason to bully when you weren’t trying to impress other people.
Bullying is the kind of issue that is never been new to us. This is also the issue that most parents wanted to be tackled and must be stop from occurring. I don’t want my son to be bullied or be part of this fast growing issue. I provided him a safety service that could protect him and secure his safety. I registered my son to SafeKidZone because it has a mobile security application that enables my son to summon help from trusted people and with access to the nearest 911 when safety issue arise. For child protection check out: http://safekidzone.com/
it’s a pet peeve of mine to see someone point out some aspect of daily life in a highly industrialized nation and try to rationalize it by pointing to some baseless imagined version of caveman life. there’ s evidence of prehistoric bands caring for people born with debilitating birth defects well into adulthood, and, while my knowledge of the subject is rudimentary, nothing I’ve ever heard about patterns of authority in foraging cultures really matches up with the cave bully described in the article. We’ve got no rational reason to assume our collective ancestors were running around like ‘lord of the flies’ , humans grow up to be full-fledged adults whatever culture they’re from, prehistoric or not.