See Update.

Really. Boston.com dug it up, and Mediaite spells it out:

Romney took English 3, Elementary Algebra, Biology, French 1, and Art 3. He is credited in his art class for having a “real ability in painting,” but admitted that Romney is “not as industrious or as responsible as he might be.”

The rest of the report card contains similar comments about Romney’s potential to do better in class, and under additional comments, the following is written about Romney’s overall performance.

“Mitt is doing well. He is a more responsible citizen this year.”

Wow. Just devastating. So while he was allegedly cutting a classmate’s hair because he thought the guy was gay, Mitt was becoming “a more responsible citizen.” Looks like somebodyhad the teacher fooled…

But seriously, his high school report card? Someone at The Boston Globe was paid to research this, and then New England’s biggest newspaper actually wasted online space to publish it? Can we see even half that much effort over Obama’s college records, since they were only 28 years ago instead of over 45 years ago? Personally, I don’t care about the President’s college records, but if we’re supposed to be in an uproar about Romney’s taxes, and care how he did in freakin’ art class, perhaps those could also be found?

I’ve left a message with the editor of Boston.com asking why the decision was made to research this particular bit of so-called news. If he gets back to me I will add an update.

Update, 8/6/12(Ed): Boston Globe editor Martin Baron e-mailed us today to clarify that Romney’s report card has been available on line since 2007, when the Globe produced it for a profile of Romney during that campaign, and was not republished in this cycle:

This report card has been available ever since the Boston Globe published a 7-part biographical series about Romney, which later evolved into a book, “The Real Romney,” published this year. The series was published in 2007 as Romney entered the Republican presidential primaries during the last election cycle and well before anyone knew that Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee. The Globe researched and published this biography in 2007 because Romney had been governor of our state, and we were well situated to tell the story of his life and career.

As with any biography, it focused on the totality of his life. Romney and some members of his family collaborated to some extent with that series, and a rich trove of material was available elsewhere, including the publicly available archives of his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney.

One of the stories focused on Romney’s teen years, although it did not dwell on his grades. The report card was posted online in 2007 as a tiny part of an accompanying multimedia presentation. We have never embarked on an investigation of his high school grades, then or since.

Mediaite, which was the source of the story, corrected their article well after Dustin wrote this post.  We are happy to correct the record, and thank Mr. Baron for his gracious note.