Here’s a few simple rules that need to be followed.  When you get exposed for having done something cruel and dickish that has haunted your fellow actors all their lives.  Do not first say you “don’t remember the incident.”  Stand up and own it.

Second, apologies do not include the words — “If my actions, words, offended anyone….”  You don’t start apologies with “if”.  Apologies go like this.  “I am so very sorry for what I did.  There is no excuse for such behavior, and I apologize.  I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me, but I hope you will.”  

See?  Look how easy.

I didn’t like Romney because of his lack of a core, or any real sense of belief, and his new conservative values, but what I see now is a man totally without empathy.  To the workers at the companies Bain capital destroyed.  To that poor dog on the roof.  To this young man he humiliated and brutalized at school (and btw Romney was 18, that doesn’t qualify as a kid in my book), to the folks at the potluck when he dissed the cookies and humiliated the people who brought them.

I don’t like bullies.  He’s a bully.