Charlie Pierce doesn’t think there’s anything nefarious in Mitt Romney’s tax returns. (John Cassidy at The New Yorker begs to differ.) He just won’t release them because the common people wouldn’t understand what a terrible burden it is being rich and that all those loopholes and off-shore tax havens aren’t just for his benefit; they’re there to make it so he can be a job creator and shine his beneficence on the rest of us.

The Help has no right to go pawing through the family books, giggling at the obvious loopholes and tax dodges, running amok through all the tax shelters, and probably getting their chocolate-y fingerprints all over the pages of the Romney family ledger. And, certainly, those members of The Help in the employ of the president of the United States, who is also part of The Help, have no right to use the nearly comically ostentatious wealth of the Romney as some sort of scrimey political weapon. He does not have to answer to The Help. I mean, jeepers, he’s running for office.

This isn’t stubbornness. That’s often an acquired trait. What this is, fundamentally, is contempt. Contempt for the process, and contempt for the people who make their living in that process, and contempt for the people whose lives depend on that process. There are rules for The Help with which Willard Romney never has had to abide, and he has no intention of starting now. My dear young fellow, this simply is not done.

Now, have Lawrence bring the station wagon around to the front; I need to take the dog for a walk.