Awkward Denial of the Day: The Washington Post is out today with a deeply reported piece on Mitt Romney that paints him as a privileged bully who picked on classmates he suspected of being gay. A particularly horrific story is that of classmate John Lauber, a new kid at the exclusive Cranbrook prep school whose long, bleach-blonde hair offended Romney’s conservative sensibilities.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Confronted about the incident this morning on a radio talk show, Romney tried in vain to save face.

I’m not gonna be too concerned about their piece. I played a lot of pranks in high school, and they described some that, uh, well, you just say to yourself that, uh, back in high school, I did some dumb things, and if anybody was hurt by that or offended by that, obviously I apologize. But overall, high school was a long time ago, and I’m glad I’ve got some good friends from those years.

Pressed further, he responded:

I don’t, I don’t remember that incident. And I certainly don’t believe that I, or, I can’t speak for other people, of course, but thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s. That was not the case.

[washpo]