Friday, May 11, 2012
Vulture as bully ... not news
Not a bit surprised to hear that Vulture Romney, who enjoys tearing companies apart and forcing their employees into poverty, had a sadistic streak as a youngster.
One thing strikes me as interesting. In the parts of the world and culture where I grew up, homosexuality was basically a non-concept in 1965. We knew who was 'that way', and it just didn't matter. No big deal, because the males who were 'that way' didn't make it a big deal. Unlike now, they didn't force their preferences on the rest of us via TV, newspapers, Facebook, etc.
There was plenty of bullying and teasing, but it was purely about position in hierarchy. If A was higher than B, A teased B. Normal part of growing up for any social mammal. B had to learn how to deal with it, either by rising in the hierarchy or by finding positive elements in life outside the bullying situation.
It appears that Romney's world was different. In his super-rich super-liberal Yankee boarding school, sexual orientation was a big deal, and it was a major part of the bullying relationship.
= = = = =
Parallel to what I'd noticed before about male/female hierarchy. In "unenlightened redneck yahoo" Oklahoma in 1965, women and men filled pretty much the same roles. Frontier tradition. Women fixed cars, owned businesses, and moved around freely, without losing their female appearance and style. They didn't turn into swaggering crewcut monsters. No big deal.
When I moved to Penn State in 1986, I saw a very different world. In that "enlightened progressive" part of the world, women stayed home and expected to be sheltered and supported; and the most Progressive male PSU faculty members openly expressed a bizarre sort of contempt toward women. Those tenured Commies, while forcing everyone else to conform to their egalitarian dictates, made it clear that they didn't think women should be working anywhere near them. ¶ 8:13 AM
One thing strikes me as interesting. In the parts of the world and culture where I grew up, homosexuality was basically a non-concept in 1965. We knew who was 'that way', and it just didn't matter. No big deal, because the males who were 'that way' didn't make it a big deal. Unlike now, they didn't force their preferences on the rest of us via TV, newspapers, Facebook, etc.
There was plenty of bullying and teasing, but it was purely about position in hierarchy. If A was higher than B, A teased B. Normal part of growing up for any social mammal. B had to learn how to deal with it, either by rising in the hierarchy or by finding positive elements in life outside the bullying situation.
It appears that Romney's world was different. In his super-rich super-liberal Yankee boarding school, sexual orientation was a big deal, and it was a major part of the bullying relationship.
= = = = =
Parallel to what I'd noticed before about male/female hierarchy. In "unenlightened redneck yahoo" Oklahoma in 1965, women and men filled pretty much the same roles. Frontier tradition. Women fixed cars, owned businesses, and moved around freely, without losing their female appearance and style. They didn't turn into swaggering crewcut monsters. No big deal.
When I moved to Penn State in 1986, I saw a very different world. In that "enlightened progressive" part of the world, women stayed home and expected to be sheltered and supported; and the most Progressive male PSU faculty members openly expressed a bizarre sort of contempt toward women. Those tenured Commies, while forcing everyone else to conform to their egalitarian dictates, made it clear that they didn't think women should be working anywhere near them. ¶ 8:13 AM
