Several decades ago in grade school I wrote and passed a cruel note about a girl in my class. She was a bit chubby and had few friends. Whether she ever knew of the note or not, I immediately felt tremendous guilt, and still cringe when I think of it. Every since, I have tried to be on the side of the bullied, but I certainly have never forgotten what I did, and can even remember her name and her face. This ugly chapter of my own history is burned into my brain, although I have never spoken of it until now.
When Mr. Romney says he does not remember the high school incident reported by his classmates, there are a few possibilities: a) he has a crappy memory (not good in a President); b) he is lying; or c) he frequently bullied, such that this was commonplace and therefore not memorable. Initially I thought he was lying, but upon further reflection I am leaning toward choice c. For a serial bully this would just be another day in their life, forgettable, like what you eat for lunch. I do not think that we should judge people based on mistakes made in high school or even later in life, but as to the person that they are now, and how they have "evolved." But just as Romney has said he will not evolve on gay rights, he also appears to retain his primitive and cruel behavior as an adult, at least when it serves his own interests.
People who treat their dog like a piece of furniture and then regret only that it brought negative attention are probably serial bullies. People who enjoy closing down businesses and firing people profit from pushing other around, a great motive for being a bully. But more recent evidence for Romney as a serial bully can be found in a Vanity Fair piece that recounts two horrific cases of his intimidation of women; both relate to his position as a leader in the Mormon Church. In one instance Romney pushed a single mother to give up her child for adoption.
In that moment, she also felt intimidated. Here was Romney, who held great power as her church leader and was the head of a wealthy, prominent Belmont family, sitting in her gritty apartment making grave demands. “And then he says, ‘Well, this is what the church wants you to do, and if you don’t, then you could be excommunicated for failing to follow the leadership of the church,’ ” Hayes recalled. It was a serious threat. At that point Hayes still valued her place within the Mormon Church. “This is not playing around,” she said. “This is not like ‘You don’t get to take Communion.’ This is like ‘You will not be saved. You will never see the face of God.’ ”
In a second incident reported in the same Vanity Fair piece, another woman describes what happened when Romney came to her in the hospital, where she was planning to have an abortion, in part due to a dangerous pelvic blood clot:
“As your bishop,” she said he told her, “my concern is with the child.” The woman wrote, “Here I—a baptized, endowed, dedicated worker, and tithe-payer in the church—lay helpless, hurt, and frightened, trying to maintain my psychological equilibrium, and his concern was for the eight-week possibility in my uterus—not for me!”
Romney denies telling the first woman to give up her child, and of the second he said “I don’t have any memory of what she is referring to, although I certainly can’t say it could not have been me.”
I imagine these accounts only scratch the surface, and that many other Romney victims have their stories. Too bad he does not remember them.