Ken Berwitz

The Washington Post's "exposé" - conveniently published one day after President Obama's statement in support of gay marriage - that, 47 years ago, Mitt Romney, along with a half dozen or so other boys, cut off some of a fellow student's hair because - according to the story - they thought it was too long and that me might have been a homosexual, is blowing up in the paper's face.

Good.

Excerpted from Matthew Jaffe's blog for ABC News:

The older sister of Mitt Romney’s former high school classmate said she has no knowledge of any bullying incident involving her brother and the GOP presidential candidate.

Christine Lauber, who is a few years older than John Lauber, was at college when the alleged incident happened, and said the brother and sister were “doing our own thing” at the time.

When ABC News showed her the story, Christine Lauber’s eyes welled up with tears and she became agitated.

She also corrected the story, saying her brother was a boarder, not a day student.

She described her brother as a “very unusual person.”

“He didn’t care about running with the peer group,” Christine Lauber said. “What’s wrong with that?”

Betsy Lauber, one of John Lauber’s three sisters, spoke with ABC News Tuesday night regarding the accuracy of the story.

“The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda. There will be no more comments from the family,” she said.

Let's add this to the fact that Stu White, one of the students who, according to the Post's original story, had "long been bothered" by the incident - told ABC News that, actually a) he wasn't there to see it, and b) he didn't even know it happened until the Post contacted him about it. 

And, while we're at it, let's also note that, as the result of White's embarrassing take-down, the Post changed the story's wording on line to reflect Stu White's actual recollection....without telling readers that the story had been revised.  After all, why inform readers that the original version was BS if you can get away with pretending it never happened?

Here's a question for the Washington Post:  at what point do you just retract this idiotic, irrelevant, and apparently filled-with-holes story about a dumb kid's prank from almost a half century ago?  At what point is it enough of an embarrassment for you to just chuck it and own up? 

Heck, if the Post calls off the dogs on "haircutgate", maybe it will leave a few extra seconds to investigate Barack Obama's BS "birth certificate" that every IT analyst seems to know is a fake - like, for example, having an expert or two examine the document and report their findings. 

Or maybe the paper could use the time to track down Barack Obama's transcripts from every school he ever went to, all of which have desperately been kept hidden from view, and to figure out why he is so fearful of releasing them.

I realize that none of this is anywhere near as important as what a teenage Mitt Romney did in high school.  But I'll bet that somewhere, somehow, one or two trivia buffs might be interested.....