TRAIN WRECK OF THE WEEK > 'Well-Educated' Snob Is Latest Viral Video Victim: Just Deserts?

Welcome to the Internet, Hermon Raju! You might want to avoid public transportation for a while (and you reader, need to watch the video posted below ASAP).

At around 10:00pm on June 14th, Raju, a passenger on the Metro-North train in New York, let loose with a stream of snobbery, elitism and just plain obnoxiousness that is so over-the-top you might think it’s a candid camera prank. Only, it's not.

And the whole Internet knows.

When a conductor allegedly overhears Raju cursing and talking loudly on her cell phone and asks her to stop, Raju begins her defense with, “Do you know what schools I’ve been to and how well-educated I am?”

And it just goes downhill from there. Raju’s voice rises as she yells to the conductor: “I’m sorry – do you think I’m a little hoodlum? Please repeat to me the words I was being profane with.”

The conductor says Raju was lobbing “F-bombs,” which infuriates Raju.

“From my mouth? Excuse me, do you know how well-educated I am?”

All credit to the conductor, who either is blessed with the patience of Job or has plenty of experience dealing with nasty passengers, for refusing to lower herself to engage with Raju at her level. Though Raju loudly demands that the train be stopped and she be refunded her money, according to reports she later exits at her stop without incident.

And you just know Raju went home and told all her equally well-educated friends about how she reprimanded the lowly train conductor who dared to confront her about her behavior.

Raju couldn’t have known then that in just a couple of days millions of other people would be weighing in as well.

Another passenger on the train captured Raju’s rant on a cell phone and posted it to YouTube. Passed between friends and coworkers and posted eighty gazillion times on various blogs and news sites, the 2 ½ minute cringe-worthy video ignited ferocious debates on race, public transportation, New Yorkers in general, elitism, manners and parenting. Though the original YouTube video was removed, it of course was almost immediately reposted.

Within hours, Detective Internet was on the case, and the world learned her name and where she was so well-educated (NYU? Really? Is NYU-elitism a thing?), the apex of just the latest (but certainly not the last) episode of Name and Shame on the Web.

Fox News quotes Metro-North spokeswoman Marjorie Anders, who praises the conductor for her “great restraint.”

"We're proud of her behavior," Anders says, “This is an unusual incident. Most of our train rides are extremely uneventful -- and that's just the way we like it."