A sad day for child stars and bullies.

This is truly a sad day for the kid. Now I know what little kids feel like when they are told that there is no Santa Claus. Most of you who have been following me for awhile now know that I have a thing for a certain former child star. In fact, one of the reasons for this blog was to try and blow up enough so that she would take notice of me and reach out so that a brotha could put a major check off on his "bucket list".

Anywhoo, tonight I was slapped in the face by very cruel guy called reality. Lark, I am officially calling off my quest to find you. (You guys can lay off me on twitter now.) I know that pictures sometimes lie, but sorry Lark, I cannot turn a blind eye to the facts any longer: you are just not who you used to be.

Finally, I am not surprised to read that Flipper was a bully back in the day. Flipper said he just did some "dumb things". I guess none of his victims went out and killed themselves, so Mitt will probably take that as a win.

"WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney made a surprise appearance on Fox host Brian Kilmeade's radio show Thursday morning to respond to a lengthy Washington Post story on his time as a prep-school prankster and occasional bully of closeted gay students.

"They talk about the fact that I played a lot of pranks in high school," Romney said. "And they describe some that you just say to yourself, back in high school I just did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended by it, obviously I apologize."

“I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far and for that, I apologize," he added.

It's never quite clear whether a politician's high school years are fair game for political attacks. Romney suggested during the interview that the acts he was apologizing for were merely youthful indiscretions; the Post described him pinning a closeted gay classmate to the ground and cutting his long hair, for example. But with the story suggesting latent homophobia in an adolescent Romney and with President Barack Obama having endorsed same-sex marriage on Wednesday, the piece reverberated." [Source]

As it should have. Honestly, the more you hear about this guy is the scarier he seems.

The family dog on the roof? No big deal. Bully Gay classmate? No big deal. Make fun of disabled teacher? No big deal. Callously fire people from their jobs? No big deal. And on and on it goes.

"Asked if he has any doubt that what Romney did could be considered bullying, Maxwell responded, “Oh my god, are you kidding?… I castigated myself regularly for not having intervened. I would have felt a lot better about myself had I said hey, enough.”

“When I saw the look on his (Lauber’s) face, it was a look I’ll never forget,” said Maxwell. “When you see a victim, the sense of trust betrayed in this boy who was perfectly innocent for being different.”
“This was bullying supreme,” he said." [Source]

"I did some stupid things when I was in high school."

No Flipper bullying someone who is different is not just a "stupid thing." Playing drinking games is "stupid". This kind of thing causes young people to take their own lives. It's a little more than just "stupid".

Flipper, I am glad you apologized. Sadly, the kid you bullied in high school will not hear your apology; he died in 2004.









    

The Mole.

I am so sorry to see that they found the mole over at the news network for dummies. (No, not the mole looking guy in the pic. That's actually their leader.) We could have learned a lot from that guy.

Now FOX is threatening legal action. God forbid someone tells us what we have known all along: that their news is manufactured by republican political operatives who feed them talking points for their on air staff. 

"I think their legal accusations are completely baseless," Muto said on CNN. "They're trying to intimidate me into silence because I'm revealing unflattering information about the inner workings of the company.

He added:

"I'm not a sociopath, Howard. I don't want to make it sound like I worked there for eight years with a chip on my shoulder, and I hated everyone. There's a lot of, you know, really nice, you know, people who I really like and respect. So, those people, if I hurt any of them, I apologize to them. But I felt the need to speak out because my story--my story had to be told. I couldn't--I couldn't be in that building one day longer without, you know, exploding."

 I have to give Gawker credit for at least giving it the old college try.  It would have been nice to know what goes on behind closed doors. The FOX crew must have been working overtime to catch this guy. And, catch him they did.

Mr. Muto should be counting his blessings. Maybe mow he can go on to be a real journalist.

Finally, I have to have a last word about Flipper and this mommygate controversy.

“I wanted to increase the work requirement,” Romney said. “I said, for instance, that even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that's heartless,' and I said ‘No, no, I'm willing to spend more giving daycare to allow those parents to go back to work. It'll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.’” [Source]

So, in essence, what he is saying is that there is no "dignity" in being a stay at home mother.

But republicans pounced on this non-issue when a democratic operative basically said that Ann Romney can't relate to working mothers out there because she had never worked a day in her life.

I know that Flipper and his wife would like to, but they just can't have it both ways.

The truth of the matter is that Ann Romney cannot relate to poor and middle class women who have to raise their children and work for a living. So she shouldn't even pretend that she knows how to do it for the sake of her husband's endless quest to occupy the White House. It's just flat out wrong.
Yes Ann, raising kids is hard work, but I am sure it helps when you have a bunch of maids around the house and a few million large ones sitting in a bank account. 

That's what Hilary Rosen was trying to say, and if folks had taken the time to listen and process what she said instead of jumping into partisan mode, they would have heard her loud and clear.

As others have said, Hilary Rosen committed a "mortal sin of American politics: "She spoke the truth with a microphone on."