I'm so tired of seeing that Romney's behavior was acceptable back then.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. It wasn't any more acceptable then than it is now.

He got away with it because his father was the Governor, and his hoity-toity private school wasn't about to discipline the Governor's kid. And it's possible that in those days the schools did have more of a boys-will-be-boys attitude toward bullying and hazing. But that doesn't mean it was an acceptable way to behave, then or now.

Kids can be really mean, and they (or at least some of them) will gang up on each other and behave like assholes unless somebody teaches them to be civilized. Evidently nobody bothered to teach Mittens that lesson. And some kids just grow out of it and learn "civilization" on their own. I thought it was interesting that the four or five others who participated in the incident now remember it clearly and feel sorry and ashamed. Mittens, not so much - he just chuckled and claimed not to remember it at all. And this response, in a way, is almost as bad as the original act. The other kids grew consciences - Mittens, it seems, did not.