If there’s one thing anyone in the political spectrum should learn from movies and television, it’s that you should never go off on a tirade about your secret plans or intentions — odds are, there’s a hidden camera running. But Mitt Romney is clearly not too well-versed in this sitcom staple, as the presidential candidate used a private fundraiser earlier in 2012 as a venue to voice his true thoughts about Obama supporters.
The Republican Party’s White House hopeful made a series of controversial remarks about the community of Americans behind President Barack Obama, deeming the lot “people who pay no income tax,” and that they are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
Romney went on to spout additional comments, such as the proclamation, “Had [my father] been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.” The former governor can be seen addressing the fundraiser attendees in the below video segments, courtesy of Mother Jones:
It’s hard to believe that with so many film and TV characters who have wound up on video during particularly incriminating moments, Romney still ended up in the middle of the ol’ caught-on-camera shtick. Hasn’t he ever seen Machete? Senator McLaughlin found himself the secret subject of a career-destroying (and ultimately life-ending) revelation of all the crimes and corruptions in which he was involved.
And then there’s Monster’s Inc.: The nefarious Henry J. Waternoose was undone in the similar fashion — ranting to his top employee James Sullivan about how he’d “kidnap a thousand children” before letting his mega-corporation crumble. Unbeknownst to Waternoose, the entire ordeal was caught on camera (courtesy of the company’s studio set used to film monsters practicing their scare tactics). Waternoose was abruptly taken away by the authorities, and was never heard from again.
Another example of the trope finds itself in Batman & Robin, in which Batman uses a recording of super villain Poison Ivy admitting to the murder of her associate Mr. Freeze’s wife, in order to turn Freeze against her. That’s politics, baby.
In a rare audio-only version of this cinematic element, Old School villain Dean Pritchard found his undoing in a recorded admission of engaging in a bribe with a college student. The cassette tape, thanks to the fancy footwork and fighting styles of Will Ferrell, found itself in the right hands to remove Pritchard from his administrative position, and allow the good guys (the same good guys who bullied poor Pritchard mercilessly as a kid… wait a second…) to prevail.
And finally, the great medium of television. One of the most memorable examples of a recorded conversation unexpectedly doing someone in happened on a plot-twisting episode of Friends, during which the entire gang caught Rachel seducing Ross with the fabled “Mt. Tibidabo” story (a guaranteed technique to earn someone’s romantic interests… if only for a night). After that, Rachel no longer had the upper hand over the innocent Ross, who had been blamed for reinforcing the romance between the two against Rachel’s wishes. But as the tape proved, she was the one who fired first.
Of course, it worked out just fine for Rachel, though not so for the rest of the examples in this company. How exactly will Romney recover from this episode?
[Photo Credit: WENN]
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