The guy who taped Romney’s “47% luzers” speech has outed himself, and he’s a mensch. Margaret Hartman, at NYMag, reports:
Mitt Romney has said the “47 Percent” video that helped him lose the election was “not elegantly stated,” but as it turns out he made another mistake: Failing to acknowledge his servers’ existence. On Wednesday night’s Ed Show, the man behind the video was revealed to be Scott Prouty, a college-educated bartender in his late thirties, who was recording Romney’s remarks as a souvenir when he realized, “this is not a normal stump speech.” Prouty was initially undecided on whether or not to release the tape, but says, “I felt an obligation for all the people that couldn’t be there. You shouldn’t have to be able to afford $50,000 to hear what a candidate actually thinks.”…
Prouty felt Romney’s attitude was telling, and didn’t like that Romney made a crack about speeding up his service soon after arriving at the fateful dinner party on May 17, 2012. However, what offended Prouty was Romney’s description of touring a factory in China where workers are packed into dormitories surrounded by barbed wire (to keep out all the people desperate to work there, the bosses told Romney). “He just walked though this horrendous place and thought, ‘Hey, this is pretty good,'” said Prouty…
Prouty told Ed Schultz that he deliberated about releasing the video for about two weeks, and was leaning against it when he came to a realization in the middle of the night. “I walked into the bathroom and I just looked in the mirror and the words ‘you coward’ just came out of my mouth,” he said. “I just looked in the mirror and said, ‘You’re a coward. You’re an absolute coward.'”
Still, Prouty decided to remain anonymous during the election, partly because he was worried about losing his job and becoming the target of a smear campaign, but also because he didn’t want to distract from the video. “I wanted Mitt Romney’s words and Mitt Romney’s only,” he says. “I wanted his words to be the center of attention.” It’s a bit surprising to see someone hold off on claiming their 15 minutes of fame these days, but it sounds like that’s the kind of guy he is. Corn explains that after a bit of Googling he confirmed that the filmmaker isn’t one of the two “David Prouty”s who have been arrested or incarcerated, but the one who saw a woman drive her car into a Florida canal and heroically jumped in to save her.
More detail and video at the link.
Baud
Prouty reminds me of Jim the Plumber if Jim were a decent human being…and a plumber… and named Jim.
YoohooCthulhu
I also really liked the party that huffpo excerpted (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/12/how-bill-clinton-47-percent-filmmaker_n_2864711.html):
And that’s Romney in a nutshell. No empathy. I have a feeling that if you confronted Romney with the Clinton comparison, he’d respond with “What? What do you expect me to do? They’re *paid*…*generously* to work at this event. Why should I have to compensate them more than they already have been?”
Seanly
Saving people? But Ayn Rand said altruism is a form of evil or something…
dmsilev
@YoohooCthulhu: Yep. Really, this post should have been titled ‘Be like Bill Clinton, not like Mitt Romney’.
Cacti
The most interesting story Mr. Prouty told was of the difference between Bill Clinton and Mitt Romney.
After a Clinton-headlined event, Big Dog went and personally thanked all of the kitchen and catering staff, signed autographs, and posed for pictures with them.
Mitt only spoke to them once, and told them to hurry up with the dinner service.
Cacti
@YoohooCthulhu:
Jinx!
Zifnab
Oh sure. Says you. But I have it from a reliable source that he pushed her. And he was drunk. And he ate live puppies for breakfast that morning.
jrg
“Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not… fuck with us.”
the Conster
From working class Boston. Well played Scott Prouty, may the FSM bless him and keep him – he may have saved the Republic.
Betty Cracker
He sounds like a very genuine guy too. Polar opposite of Romney.
Cacti
@Zifnab:
And he says he doesn’t have health insurance, but I hear he has granite counter tops.
BGinCHI
I don’t know how much the GOP and all those billionaires spent on the 2012 election but I do know that all they got was a lying sack of shit.
Let us savor.
SatanicPanic
It will be interesting to see if he gets the granite countertops treatment from the right, since they allegedly didn’t like Romney in the first place.
But who am I kidding, they’ll got after him just because that’s what they like to do.
Chris
@Baud:
That guy was almost as representative of GOP tone-deafness as Romney’s 47% incident. The fact that their idea of outreach to the working class was to parade Joe on TV lamenting the fact that people with $250,000 salaries might actually have to pay some taxes.
D.N. Nation
Again with this. How many times did Romney *openly insult* average Americans to their faces with these wiseass cracks during the campaign? Recall Romney making fun of NASCAR fans’ ponchos, saying a woman’s friend was old and should’ve been her mother, saying that a woman who brought cookies really bought them from a gas station. And on and on.
In a few of those “let’s humanize Romney” interviews (that never seemed to work), Romney liked to say “I live for laughter” or whatever. But these cracks aren’t remotely funny. Most people would get that. Most people.
Baud
@Baud:
Fuck, it’s Joe the Plumber.
On the bright side, it’s a good thing that I’m forgetting his
namemoniker.Felanius Kootea
God bless Scott Prouty. I actually feel some trepidation for him because the right is still going to come after him hard. I’d chip in to any fund to help him go back to school, etc.
Bill Arnold
@YoohooCthulhu:
Bet they didn’t get 20 percent of $50000 per plate. :-)
EconWatcher
I’ll bet he has granite countertops. I’m sure Breitbart’s guys are on it like white on rice.
Edit: D’oh! I see several people beat me to it. But seriously, this guy sounds very classy. And the fact that he wasn’t anxious to hurt Romney, but just concluded he had a duty to disclose, just sticks the shiv in all the deeper.
These are our people. Americans can be very good.
PeakVT
@Baud: Joe, not Jim. Though his real name is Sam.
Kaptur blew him out by a cool 50 points. Note that the combined R+L votes reached the crazyfication factor.
the Conster
@Felanius Kootea:
I don’t think so. It’s all over, and Mitt isn’t liked enough by the teatards. Prouty said in the interview he’s working with Steelworkers who have his back, and he’s got this.
dmsilev
@the Conster: Oooh, Union Thugs ™!
Nathan
I dare say without Mr. Prouty and his video, this country might very well have driven itself into a canal last November.
Chris
@D.N. Nation:
It’s funny if you’re born and raised upper class in an environment where jokes about the commoners are apparently still mainstream.
I remember someone like that in college who once confided to a couple of mutual friends, giggling uncontrollably, that she and her father referred to his employees as “the plebes.” Both friends were from blue collar backgrounds and didn’t hide their liberal politics, so I don’t know how she imagined that that could possibly go over well, but she had no idea that they’d (rightly) flip a shit. Apparently that sort of tone-deafness is very common if you’re from a certain part of the upper class.
Chris
@the Conster:
There is power in a union!
Warren Terra
@Chris:
Not even that – he went on TV to complain that a business with a gross income of $250,000 would see a tax hike, which was flat untrue. Not only did he fail to understand the difference between net and gross, he made it very clear he didn’t understand tax brackets, and that the higher rates only affected the portion of the income that falls in the higher bracket. A net income of $250,000 would have sufficed under the plan to receive a tax hike, but a negligible one.
Redshirt
Release the Countertop Brigades!
AxelFoley
He and James Carter IV are fucking heroes.
Cacti
@Chris:
In Mitt’s case, he might as well have been from a different planet than the average American.
Even at his best moments of trying to show the common touch, he seemed to regard average people as a type of quaint museum exhibit.
the Conster
@AxelFoley:
It’s just a little scary though that saving the Republic always ends up being Tina Fey ridiculing Palin, or some random occurrence like this event instead of something uncovered by our fat and lazy media.
WereBear
Instant Karma’s gonna get you, gonna knock you right on the head.
I do love that backstory. Perhaps if Clinton had been standoffish, the bartender would not have been so interested in possibly getting a photo. Perhaps if Romney had not been such a entitled git, the bartender would not have done what he did.
But he did and he did and he did.
Pooh
@jrg: ftw
eemom
@Cacti:
This, and the fact that the asshole didn’t even say thanks when Prouty handed him his drink.
If there is one litmus test of a decent human being that holds up every time, no exceptions, it is how he/she treats “service” people.
EEH
@Cacti: “In Mitt’s case, he might as well have been from a different planet than the average American.”
He is, it’s called Kolob.
lamh35
comment in moderation, I guess cause of just 2 words?
Bubblegum Tate
That dude is a hero.
Chris
@Warren Terra:
In his defense, if he were to tell the truth, his viewers might’ve voted for Obama.
@Cacti:
Well, considering all the “average people” on his side of the aisle who looked up to him as a living god because he was born rich, I can see why he’d end up with that sort of attitude, I suppose.
Still curious that a guy like George Romney could’ve spawned someone like that. There were differences between Bush father and Bush son too, but there at least the father didn’t seem like an especially better person, just smarter. George Romney actually seemed to have a social conscience. Which he failed to pass on to his son.
Wag
@YoohooCthulhu:
Nail
Head
Hit
ericblair
@D.N. Nation:
Absolutely. Teh funny is almost always subversive in some way, either to the social order or the world in general, and Romney doesn’t do subversive. So he’s left with schoolyard ridicule, which is a knee-slapper if you’re a schoolyard bully but doesn’t really do anything if you’re a mature adult.
Chris
@the Conster:
That would be why my generation practically never watches the news anymore.
vh
It is amazing how accurate the Mitt Romney Style parody video (based on Gangnam Style) was. In one scene in it, a laughing Mitt points to the 47% sticker he has hung on the back of a server. It was not used by the Obama campaign, but it was even more devastating than the famous girl plucking daisy + mushroom cloud video that helped sink Goldwater in 1964.
geg6
@AxelFoley:
Agreed. But let’s give David Corn and Mother Jones some props, too. He had Carter as a researcher, I believe, so he knew talent when he saw it (he’s a mensch, too, is President Carter’s grandson) and blew that story wide open and even wrote it well, unlike 90% of the “journalists” you usually see on teevee. He still actually does investigative reporting, in addition to punditing, and does it well. He’s one of the few Villagers that I respect still.
lamh35
Yes, Romney is a elitist a*hole, but there are also alot of people who are not rich who also treat “service” staff like they are less than or invisible.
Ya’ll know I’m a NOLA girl born and raised. If ya know anything ’bout NOLA then you know tourism is our bread and butter. So service staff are everywhere and I’d bet that over 1/2 of the working population in NOLA are in the tourism industry. A large number of my family have worked or currently work in the service industry. My paternal grandmother was a head chef at a bigtime French Quarter restaurant. My paternal grandfather was a cab driver. My father was a cook in the army. My father’s sister was a top chef and worked in a number of the well-known restaurants in NOLA before she retired after Katrina. My maternal grandmother and my mom’s sister are in housekeeping (my grandmother stopped when she became disabled and my aunt is still a housekeeper at both a motel and a local casino). My mom’s youngest sister works as a room service clerk in a 5star hotel in the Quarter. Two of my uncles work at 2 different French Quarter restaurants as sous chefs. Two of my younger cousins work as a waiter and a barback in 2 other restaurants different than my uncles and my cousin’s husband is a pastry chef at one of the La Madelaine’s bakeries in the city.
The stories my family have to tell about the way they are talked to by certain customers would make anyone’s blood boil. I won’t even begin to tell you the stories they tell about how service people get back at the people who think they can treat them like dog doo. Even regular everyday Joes sometimes forget that the waiter, bartender, housekeepers and other service staff are real people and just because they are being paid to “serve” you, it doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve some courtesy and decency when they do a good job. A Thank you goes a long way even when you don’t leave a tip.
Shana
Let’s also not forget that the Seamus the dog story was originally told by one of Mitt’s sons as an effort to humanize him. The whole clan is tone deaf about what’s funny, or a cute story, or decent behavior to your fellow man.
AxelFoley
@the Conster:
I know, right?
Mike G
I’d say that despite their respective wealth and income levels, Scott Prouty is a better person and has made a greater contribution to the world than Rmoney BooBoo ever will.
Kyle
@Shana:
“So the dog shit himself in terror, all over the car, and Mitt didn’t have him immediately put to sleep, or hold him down and shave him like that kid in high school. What a great compassionate guy he is, hyuk hyuk hyuk.”
How big of an asshole do you have to be for your dog to run away?
The Other Chuck
@Shana:
FTFY
geg6
@Shana:
Well, they’re Republicans, aren’t they?
Trollhattan
@eemom:
Willard keeps proving he’s EXACTLY who we thought he is.
Found it interesting Prouty zeroed in on the Chinese
labor campfactory visit as the most damning comment, yet it didn’t have an impact.Litlebritdifrnt
@eemom:
When I was waitressing at my uncle’s restaurant he always told me “the people who matter don’t mind, the people who mind don’t matter” words to live by.
grandpa john
@AxelFoley:maybe it means that there is someone looking out for us as a country.
Baud
@grandpa john:
Where was that person when Dukakis decided to get in that damn tank?!
Turgidson
@geg6:
I like Corn too. He has trouble containing his disgust for braindead teabaggers, which I find endearing but got him into a little trouble not long ago on Tweety’s show.
He was brought on to debate with a leader of some Teabagger astroturf group or another (though not a recognizable person like Dickhead Armey) who had almost no grasp on reality whatsoever and said all kinds of things that were demonstrably ridiculous or untrue. Corn got more and more frustrated as the segment went on, to the point where Tweety was like “quiet you, let her get her views across.” It was sort of like a scene from Barney Frank’s “arguing with a dining room table” script.
I’m sure Corn came off as a condescending jerk to some people, but I don’t know what else he could have done in that situation. The lady seemed to sincerely believe her sky-is-pink nonsense, but was basically doing the Gish Gallop whether she realized it or not. Would be frustrating to be on the other end of that discussion.
Paula
@eemom:
Ugh. I’m not a great tipper of everyone who provides services. I don’t always leave tips at coffee houses and I don’t give presents to the people who deliver my mail.
But God help me if I am ever rude or condescending to the people who serve me while I’m sitting down somewhere in a place where I am a guest. It seems like common sense.
But then again, this is why its a good idea for everyone — including the very rich — to spend some time behind the counter.
quannlace
From my waitressing days,the obviously well-off were always the worst tippers. The best? Former servers themselves or the parents of same.
Mike G
I imagine living under a Rmoney presidency would be like working for the typical asshole MBA in the typical American corporation, with all the dignity, respect, justice and human rights of an average corporate front-line employee today. Except you never clock out 24/7 and can’t quit for at least four years.
Chris
@Trollhattan:
Yeah, I agree. It was, in fact, easily the most damning thing in that whole story and I give him props for thinking so as well. But I suppose the stories of a bunch of wage slaves on the other side of the world isn’t considered newsworthy. (Neither is the fact that that’s what Romney considers appropriate for us right here).
TheWatcher
@D.N. Nation: The scary part is, that after all that, 57.2 million still voted for the scumbag. Tells you a lot about this country and why its in decline.
Chris
@Paula:
I… understand the point that tips shouldn’t simply be taken for granted, in the abstract, but I find it really hard to apply that in our context, because all too often, a tip isn’t something you leave simply to thank a waiter for quality service on top of their existing wage; it’s literally the difference between the minimum wage they should be earning and what their employers actually pay them.
I think I’m the other way around; the “be grumpy towards waiter because of bad service” threshold is lower than the “don’t leave a tip” threshold for me. In the latter case, I actually feel like I’m stealing.
Mike in NC
How can we nominate that bartender for a Presidential Medal of Freedom?
Gravenstone
@YoohooCthulhu: See, it’s all Clinton’s fault!
/wingnut
Paula
@Chris:
Well, if you’re well informed about how hard that work is and how poorly it pays, it IS stealing!
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh35: Servers, office support staff, and custodial people. Always be polite to them. And don’t make their jobs any tougher than you need to.
First, it is simple decency. Second, they can make things much easier for you if they want to. Third, they can make things much less pleasant for you if they choose to.
the Conster
Steelworker Union Thug President is getting Scott Prouty’s back now on Ed’s show. They’ve got his back. OMG this guy so fucking gets it, and a real working class hero is born with Scott Prouty. Smart, strategic, and raising money for law school – that’s what the steelworkers are saying and doing for Scott. STRATEGIC AND SMART. Scott Prouty is a Hero.
raven
@lamh35: Chez Helene?
Chris
@Paula:
Yeah, that’s my point, re tipping and not always tipping. I don’t have the same ethical problem with being rude or grumpy. That’s still only appropriate if the service has been truly awful; but not tipping = basically never. IMO.
Jay in Oregon
@Paula:
I had this conversation with a friend a while back: he thinks it’s acceptable to not tip or tip poorly for crappy service.
In my opinion? If the service is that horrible, then I don’t go there again.
I have no problem with places that put a mandatory gratuity on the bill; it’s at least a step closer to actually paying them minimum wage (if not a living one).
Gex
@Chris: When I am displeased with service, I tip 15%. Otherwise I tip 20 – 25%. I find that if you are pleasant to waitstaff, you rarely have poor service anyhow.
lamh35
@Gex: exactly. my aunt, the one who works in room service, says she always tips, but depending on the satisfaction of service determines whether they get the bare minimum tip, or over the minimum.
Paula
@Jay in Oregon:
Yeah, that seems like sound advice.
I’ve sat through some bad service. Never been tempted to put down less than 15% in any case. But they lost my business, so, that’s probably enough “revenge”.
Wally Ballou
@lamh35: An aunt of mine is, unfortunately, an example of the type of lower-middle-class person who makes herself feel big by treating service workers shabbily. Not one of the (thankfully rare) occasions when I’ve dined out with her has she not complained about the speed, made them take at least one food item back, left a crummy tip, etc.
I’m sure it will surprise nobody at all that she’s also a dedicated Fox News viewer.
Chris
@Gex:
That’s true. Or even just “not a dick.” For all the whining you sometimes hear about the poor work ethic in minimum wage workers, I’ve found those “truly awful” experiences to be really rare.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gex: Generally, I tip 20%, 25% if I am really pleased. I will do 15%, if I am disappointed. The only time I will go below 15% is if there are repeated problems, if the problems have been pointed out to the server, if the problems are within the server’s power to fix, and the server simply doesn’t bother. It happens sometimes, and I will usually leave a little note.
Also, I agree that if one is pleasant to the server, one generally gets a good experience.
JoyfulA
And tip hotel maids, too!
Turgidson
@Gex:
That’s my norm too. I’ve never been a server, nor am I wealthy enough to consider service industry people to be a lesser form of life like Mittens apparently does, but it seems pretty obvious that it is hard work, especially at really busy restaurants. When I’m paying, the server starts at 20% and can only go up from there unless they make a point of doing a really bad job.
I admit I fudge this rule a bit at particularly expensive places (though I can’t afford to go to such places on my own dime too often), as I don’t think it’s 5 times as hard to be a server at those places than it is at, say Chili’s or something of that ilk. More difficult in some ways, sure – you have to be more formal with the guests, know pairings and details of the menu, and wine lists, and so on. But the physical labor aspect of bringing out a $50 steak vs. a $10 cheeseburger is about the same. So there’s a little bit of a sliding scale.
rikyrah
@lamh35:
I spent my college years earning my spending money in the service industry. I think everyone should spend a year working in the service industry – I believe you’d never treat anyone who serves again with disrespect…and, it totally shaped my viewpoint on how much you should tip.
Mnemosyne
I think the one time we left a 10 percent tip was when our server actually sat down at a neighboring table to chit-chat with the hot dudes sitting there and completely ignored us.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: I have never worked in the field. Too hard for me. I’ve just been a regular in enough places to watch how hard servers work and how crappily they get treated by enough people to know that I don’t want to be one of the assholes.
Montana
Great job Scott Prouty! Willard fumbled after disclosure, and when he lost the election, he went back to the same words, so come on Willard, face it, your own words lost the election, man up Willard, man up. Willard didn’t even get all registered GOP voters out to vote for him, plus the GOP states that passed all those voter restriction, tick people off, and all those states elected President Obama. Willard was the worse candidate ever, even England dubbed Willard “Mitt the twit”. We have been sick and tried of all your Corporate Welfare and tax breaks and the fact that you don’t pay any federal income taxes, but hey keep your ill gotten money, we don’t want you or your money. Willard you were taught an important message….You can’t buy everything with money!
lou
What I fear is that he could get prosecuted for taping without permission. Florida is a state where both sides must agree to taping. I can see some Republican asshole pouncing on that.
True story: I had a friend interview a police chief in Fla. She put the tape recorder on his desk and turned it on. He gave the interview and then told her: I didn’t agree to this being recorded, so you have to get rid of the tape.
dance around in your bones
Well, having worked in the service field myself, what I figured out was that it was the last refuge for the powerless to assert their power.
I had a couple come into the deli I was managing and – because one of the women came out from the kitchen with a sour look on her face (she had just spilled a hot coffee pot on her leg) they demanded that I get her fired.
I was gobsmacked.
I also had a woman try to get ME fired when I worked as a phar.macy tech because she got all agitated when I was explaining to her what her insurance company would and would not cover (the dreaded formulary). I said “Calm down” and she just went ballistic.
Luckily my boss just sorta said fuck her.
Elmo
I always figure that the delta between a moderate tip and a really outstanding tip – one that will make the server’s whole day – is such a small amount in absolute dollars that it’s nearly always worth the extra couple bucks.
Think about the numbers. On a $100 ticket, only $5 separates a normal tip (20%) from a really special one (25%). If that $5 is a hardship, I’ve no business buying a $100 meal in the first place.
Joshua
Ok, somebody needs to photoshop together a “Good Guy Scott Prouty” meme.
redoubt
@rikyrah: @quannlace: FWIW: I never thought about it much, then after college spent two years at Pizza Hut. Now my minimum is 20%.
Full Metal Wingnut
@lou: if there isn’t an exception for public figures, there should be.