I don’t need to explain this, right? Willard Mitt Romney has been caught on video disparaging roughly half the voting population as being dependent on government assistance and not paying taxes (what they mean is not paying INCOME TAXES–poor people pay FICA on every dime, they pay sales taxes, if they own a car the taxes on the fuel and registration are a much bigger chunk of their income than they are for the 1%). But I digress.

This is all about Hubris. The Greeks could see Romney as a low-rent Oedipus or Creon, someone convinced of his own power and incautious. Willard Mitt is no tragic hero. He doesn’t  rise to the level of a King Lear–he’s more like MacBeth, thinking no more than one step ahead, plotting against himself as much as against the king.

But here’s the Tell–Romney disparaging the half of the American people who aren’t cutting it right now. It’s at least that, since two of three jobs created over the past five years are paying subsistence wages. So even if you’re lucky enough to have been employed, you aren’t making what you made in 2007. And what does Romney say about those people who are working fulltime and can’t cut it? What does he say to someone working at Walmart who still needs food stamps and Medicaid?

“My job is not to worry about those people.” 

Well, Willard–one of the 47% cohort, some poor busboy or waiter who is barely scraping by, took the time (and the personal risk) to take video of you saying that and figured out how to share it with the world. He probably made less than $100 for working that gig–a night of picking up dirty dishes and bringing extra drinks to snobs and listening to racist jokes made by your supporters. But HE GOT YOU BACK. And now you know you can’t get away with ‘speaking off the cuff’ anymore–at least not until you get a guest role on The Donald’s show The Apprentice. Next summer, you know. when you’re not really busy.

All us bed-wetting liberals need to acknowledge a Norma Rae moment here. And that individual got home by carpool or (perhaps) rode a bike home through the dark and dangerous streets with the camera in the backpack, along with his work shoes caked with grease and old potatoes and the uniform that always smells of stale food. Maybe had to go to his second job early the next morning, worrying that somebody saw him and his boss will call him out.

Friends, we need to acknowledge heroes. Just saying.