Like everyone else, we watched the movie of the week – that clandestine video from Mitt Romney’s fundraiser in Florida. Thanks to that anonymous cameraperson, we now have a record of what our modern day, wealthy gentry really thinks about the rest of us — and it’s not pretty.

On the other hand, it’s also not news. If you had reported for as long as some of us have on winner-take-all politics and the unenlightened assumptions of the moneyed class, you wouldn’t find the remarks of Romney and his pals all that exceptional. The resentment, disdain and contempt with which they privately view those beneath them are an old story.

In fact, the video is reminiscent of our first Gilded Age, back in the late nineteenth century. The celebrated New York dandy Frederick Townsend Martin summed it up when he declared, “We are the rich. We own America. We got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it.”

And so they do, as that glitzy gathering in Florida reminds us. You could see and hear one of the guests ask Mitt Romney what they could do to help. The governor answers, “Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars, because the president’s going to have about $800 to $900 million. And that’s – that’s by far the most important thing you could do.”

He’s being truthful there because money rules these campaigns. And if there were more secret videos from other candidates, we would see them in equally compromised positions, bowing and scraping in their infernal pursuit of campaign cash, bending over backwards to suffer the advice that the privileged think their money entitles them to give.

And we mean both parties. Not far from us the other night, at a Manhattan fundraiser hosted by Jay-Z and BeyoncÃ©, President Obama joked, “If somebody here has a $10 million check — I can’t solicit it from you, but feel free to use it wisely.” At least we think he was joking — Obama and Romney alike now shape their schedules as much around moneymaking events as around rallies and town halls. Even though a state may be a lost cause when it comes to votes, if there’s money to be made, they’ll change the campaign jet’s flight plan and make a special landing, just for the cold, hard cash.