He Who Is Without..Fire Away

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-ruben/prank-or-pattern-why-romn_b_1513555.html
http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Mitt-Romney-s-hijinks-seen-as-bullying-today-3552617.php
http://www.nj.com/njvoices/index.ssf/2012/05/why_the_romney_bully_story_mat.html


In the Bible, or shall I say the Bible I read, there is a story about a women who is going to be stoned for adultery.  Jesus comes along and utters the famous line "He who is without sin may cast the first stone"
This story came to mind when I first heard it break sometime last week.  After that, I took a long hard look back in my memory bank to think of the things I did in school.  Some good, some bad, some just plain ugly


None of us really want to be judged for what we did in high school, good or bad.  The things we did that seemed great at the time though many look dimmer when compared to the good things we do now.  The bad things would be best forgotten.  The ugly are things that you would like to have a Men In Black mind eraser for.  So is the case with Mitt Romney, and this bullying that he took part in.  I am sure he did it, he was after all a Mormon (as much a perspective target for bullying as someone who was gay), and a guy in high school.  Having been around teenagers for the better part of the last 5 years as I have, you notice just how dumb they are, but there is something more to this story.

While bullying is bad, and I do not support bullying, there is a second line to this story that we seem to be forgetting.  That storyline is just how hungry the media is for bad news.  It seems to matter little that it is bad news from the 1960's, or the 1980's (Barack Obama's ex-girlfriend has recently written a book describing him as aloof), the news media is just grasping for any bad news they can get.  This is not anything new, particularly with politics but it really reaches a new low.  Again I go back to the fact that it was high school, and who wants to be judged high school. 

As I read over the media storm over this, I asked myself why it really matters?  The conclusion I deduced was that it was simply to sell papers and draw yet another line in the sand.  On one side will be those, who feel sorry for the young man bullied, on the other will be those who say "get of Romney's case..it was high school after all."  You can guess which side I stand..though I still don't like him. 


So what if Mitt Romney bullied in high school? If you looked at the presidents in high school you would have a regular Breakfast Club.  Nixon could be the aloof/darker artsy type (bringing to the table problems of his own). JFK, or maybe Franklin Roosevelt could play the popular/ preppy type (that has problems of their own). I bet Jimmy Carter saw the inside of a locker or two as the uber-nerd (again with problems of his own).  I guess that leaves the jock (Ford maybe..with problems of his own), and the trouble maker (we could cast Romney as such for the sake of argument..though one cannot forget problems of his own). Stereotypes form on facts after all and all of the Presidents would fit into one or the other.  We all do. It's best if we move on to the things that matter.


We all did stupid, mean, dumb things in high school.  It is part of high school.  What matters is what we do with those experiences.  If you grow, you are better for it.  If you do not, then you aren't.  Romney seems to have felt sorry for bullying, and grown from it.  He may not have grown out of the opinions behind the bullying, but he at least is not bullying people now..or to the extent of holding them down and cutting their hair.   Maybe in the future we can stop worrying so much about the media's negative news craze and more about what there is to be learned from information.  The attention should be less on what the person has done in the past, and more on what they will do. While we are at that, perhaps we could ignore the negative Nellies in the news.