Mean Mitt

How does that Monty Python thing go?  “Help, help!  I’m being repressed!” (when the peasant digging peat gets pounded by Arthur who can’t afford a horse) There’s a believer in democracy everywhere you go. 

Don’t tell me Obama isn’t shrewd politically.  He made an announcement about supporting gay marriage and it fell flat.  So immediately his crew sent out a half-bogus story about Mitt bullying a gay student in high school.  If your original strategy doesn’t work, change the subject. 

A few thoughts about picking on candidates for what they did as minors:  Women have ¼ the muscle mass of men and talk 4 times as many words per day.  Thus they usually flee violence since it ruins relationships and they would be on the losing end of a physical contest.  Teenage girls hurl insults right and left if they get in a fight, but usually don’t swing.  The same behavior can be observed in nature.  Females of a species often flee, then send out verbal warnings, and then when they do have to fight, fight with no-holds-barred, to-the-death to protect their young. 

Males on the other hand fight physically all the time.  Practically every high school guy picked on someone at some time and was picked on himself.  Fights erupted and somebody got beat up or at least slugged. It's kind of a sport, that guarantees to draw a crowd.  The constant fighting helps develop competitiveness and to understand their own power. Men are supposed to be dangerous but controlled.  But guys practice aggression under strict rules of engagement. It starts young with boys arguing about rules of wrestling or football that last longer than the actual fights last themselves.  Physical fighting teaches men something.  It teaches that there must be boundaries or there will be bad consequences.  But mostly it teaches you to resort to violence at last resort.  Else you might get beat up.  Thus it is that men ardently write the laws and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. 

And so most of us are a bit bemused at the allegation that mild-mannered Mitt was a toughie.  “If that’s true,” I can hear one of my friends who was a big tough guy in high school say, “then he sure has reformed.”  And that is said with admiration of character in mind.  Now realistically, it sounds like the story of Mitt as Aggressor has been embellished with politics in mind.  Likely he wasn’t so mean.  But whatever he did as a kid was likely a good lesson that changed his character.  The only guys we note for their meanness are the adults who never learned to be measured and stable.  Those are the guys with mug shots on the nightly news. That's Khruschev pounding the table with his shoe. 

So here’s my prediction.  When the story has played itself out, Mitt will gain support among men.  We understand what’s going on and who among us would like our own childhood dissected by the media.  Whether Mitt gains support among women depends on how he comes across, as a nerdy but lovable guy who can put us back on the right track or the evil demon the Dems make him out to be.