FU - FairAndUNbalanced.com

When I was a little kid, I liked to watch old cartoons. Depression era Popeye movies were a favorite. I don't remember many specifics now. Plot lines were kind of thin anyway.

I do remember occasional scenes, although they are disconnected in my memory from anything else. One was Popeye falling through the air in a water dive of some sort. As he dives, he says in his Popeye voice "I wonder what the poor people are doing today?" You can't put the voice in print, you have to imagine it.

As I got a little older, it occurred to me that the scene was supposed to be a form of humor based on contradiction. It was the colloquial stereotype held by normal folks of the disassociated wealth, severed from ordinary struggle of survival that was daily life for most Americans at the time. Not knowing what the other side was experiencing, caring only out of idle curiosity, was the attitude most people thought they detected in the wealthy.

As we came out of Great Depression times, having won a World War, experiencing a growth that went on for decades, Americans pretty much knew the old cliches were partly humor, partly mistaken. Thurston Howell, III, was not a realistic portrayal. It was a slapstick caricature, an obvious exaggeration. Rich people did not think that way. Non-rich people did not think they did.

Exaggeration often is seen as having a core of truth. Many of us have met a version of the moneyed who preen just a little, strutting just a bit in the knowledge of superiority. We read about the CEO who throws his weight around, but we also come across accounts of those who exhibit a more nuanced wearing of the crown. The internet can reinforce, but can also put the lie to stereotypes.

Conservative Member of the British Parliament Andrew Mitchell rides his bicycle a lot. When he was riding away from 10 Downing Street, the official home of the Prime Minister, he didn't want to go through the pedestrian gate with the common folk. He ordered police to open main security gates for him. They wouldn't violate security procedures. He flew into a rage. He later denied calling them plebs, which is a derogatory term for working class people, the rough equivalent of "boy" in America. But the report quotes him thusly:

Best you learn your f***ing place. You don't run this f***ing government ... You're f***ing plebs ... I'll have your f***ing job for this.

Pressure is on the fellow to resign. Britain is said to be a much more class conscious society than is America. Has to do with Norman invaders conquering the Saxon population in 1066. Norman descendants are thought to have inherited a superior place. But this assumption of superiority was too much.

Mitt Romney's dissertation in Boca Raton was less vulgar, less emotional than the imprompto outburst of the British legislator. But it came from a similar outlook.

It was not a slip of the tongue. It was not inelegant. It was not a mispronunciation.

It was a studied, coherent, analysis of what those in the room saw as the lower classes. Essentially, Governor Romney was describing to an appreciative audience of the wealthy the condition that makes their inferiors inferior. He sees it, not as an opportunity to expand opportunity (A potential bumper sticker?), but rather as a catalog of moral failures that led to financial failure. It is never harsh circumstance that leads to financial hardship. It is lack of merit.

Mitt Romney was in his element. No longer in awkward exchanges with the lower classes, he was among his peers, those who knew all about personal responsibility. In the zero-sum world the Governor was describing, the corollary to the moral inferiority he was outlining was the implied moral superiority of his well-to-do audience.

With the unveiling of the secret tape of that description, the just-below-the-surface, not truly believed, stereotype of wealthy snobs came an authenticity not experienced for generations.

When Bill Marriott, Hotel King, described how Mitt Romney appeared to help him tie his yacht, he illustrated the willingness of the candidate to help his fellow man.

Both Mitt and I have summer places up in New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee. And a few summers ago I was taking my grandchildren and children to town in the boat for ice cream. And we got into the docks and they were all full and I looked around, there was no place to park, so we stopped at the end of a dock.

They all jumped off and ran up the dock. And I realized there was nobody in the boat to help me dock the boat, handle the ropes, do anything ? they just left me out there at sea. So I finally found a place to park after about 20 minutes, and I pulled in, I said, ‘Who’s going to grab the rope?,’ and I looked up and there was Mitt Romney. So he pulled me in, he tied up the boat for me. He rescued me just as he’s going to rescue this great country.’

It's a bit of journey from Popeye.

You can see why Bill Marriott deserved the help. His huge boat was plain evidence that he was among the deserving part of society. The part that makes Mitt Romney feel at home. The part he is always willing to appear out of nowhere to help.

In odd moments, he may wonder what the poor people are doing today.