We can add Fox News Watch to the list that Media Matters already put together of the conservative media doing their best to dismiss or distort what happened during the Mitt Romney bullying incident that the Washington Post reported on earlier this week.
Conservative Media Fail In Their Attempt To Dismiss Report About Romney Bullying Incident:
Right-wing media have rushed to dismiss the Washington Post's report that Mitt Romney held down a high school classmate and cut his hair, claiming that "the source" for the story "wasn't actually there." In fact, the Post story relied on accounts from five separate sources, four of whom were named, and as the Post's ombudsman noted, their "accounts remain unchallenged." Romney himself said that he's "seen the reports" about the incident and that he's "not going to argue with that."
As the Media Matters report notes, the student that they continually cite at Fox was not one of the five students used as sources for the article. Scott also used Lauber's family not being aware of the incident as some sort of proof that it might not have happened. While it's understandable that they might not be happy with the story that was published, them not knowing about the incident in no way means it did not happen.
And Judith Miller, who we all know so well for helping the Bush administration with their propaganda on the invasion of Iraq, wonders why the media isn't looking into President Obama's admitted drug use when he was younger, which he does not deny and that we know about because he wrote about it in his autobiography.
Ultimately I think what matters about this story is not so much what Mitt Romney did when he was eighteen years old, but how he's responding to the story now. He's trying to deny that he was the high school bully that beat up on gay kids instead of admitting how he acted and acknowledging that it was wrong. And I don't think he's changed as an adult. He's made his millions being more than willing to take advantage of the weak and vulnerable without an ounce of remorse or introspection about how he's made his money and the real impact it had on other people's lives.
