Political irrelevance

There's exactly zero chance I'll vote for Mitt Romney this year, though I think there are criticisms of him floating around which are completely irrelevant. I tend to like MSNBC, though some of the hosts tend to rag on their opposition a bit too much in my opinion. I'm not a confrontational person, though.

Anyway, I like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes more than Ed Schultz or Lawrence O'Donnell because the former pair tends to be more accepting of outside positions. However, tonight Rachel Maddow went on at length about the Washington Post story about Mitt Romney's bullying of a (presumed) gay and nonconformist student at boarding school.

Now, clearly this bullying was wrong, but teenage years are often about stepping up to and beyond the line of what's reasonable in order for a person to form their moral sense. Many of the students who saw it or were involved now express regret, and that's more or less exactly how things should go. It's very unfortunate that someone was victimized in the process, but clearly it had a lasting effect. Presumably many of the aggressors acted with greater restraint in subsequent periods of their lives.

Bullying has gotten a lot of well-deserved attention these days, and it should be stamped out to the extent possible, but it's going too far to say that there should be absolutely zero tolerance. The ideal is probably to catch bullying early so that it doesn't get out of hand—Avoiding the escalation that could result in permanent damage.

According to at least one of Romney's classmates, there actually was an expectation that the students would be punished for their actions, but it ended up not happening for whatever reason. Inasmuch as Romney and his cohorts were responsible for their actions with their hormone-addled teenage brains, a certain level of responsibility also falls to the faculty and staff of Cranbrook.

Now, there does seem to be a fair amount of mess to be found if Romney does not distance himself from his teenage indiscretions appropriately. Everyone makes mistakes in their adolescent years, so the script is not hard to put together.


The other thing that has bugged me is the criticism that Romney and his wife own a whopping four cars at their bi-coastal residences. My mind reeled as even Jay Leno joked about it (remember, he owns dozens automobiles, many or most of which are completely impractical).  Considering the immense wealth of the Romney family, you'd practically expect them to own a fleet of 40 cars rather than 4.  My own family owned 4 cars for a brief period while I was in college and my brother wasn't far behind.  Granted, at least two of the cars were beaters, but our family was probably 100 times less wealthy than the Romneys at the time.


Anyway, let's forego the juvenile and usual things and get on to more interesting stuff.