Sheesh. I don’t know, guys.

I just finished reading a piece in the Washington Post about how a prep-school aged Mitt Romney became outraged, OUTRAGED! about the long hair of a boy who was presumably gay, trotting around campus whipping his hair around. His hair was long enough to cover one eye, and that pissed Romney off. “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection in the Post article.

Then Romney and his homies pinned the boy down and cut his hair, and ignored his helpless cries and screams to be let go.

[long pause]

I can tell you that I am a completely different person since I was in high school. I’m more mature and way less stupid. But one thing that I never, ever was, was a bully. And I knew that instigating and bulling someone to the point of making them cry was never a desire of mine, and would have given me absolutely no pleasure. There were certain things that were instinctively wrong to do–and I knew that, even then.

Does this, if anything, reflect the true character of Romney, or should we chalk this up to “kids will be kids?”

You know what gets my goat the most? In the piece and in subsequent interviews, Romney says he “doesn’t recall” any of the incidents. This is so typical of bullies. They inflict so much damage, scarring people (sometimes for life) and they don’t remember, because they have no empathy. It meant nothing to them to hurt you.