It is, of course, the usual mainstream media free-assist that should probably be considered a kind of campaign contribution: the LA Times, read by Hollywood folk who air-condition their garages while telling the little people to make sure they hang their laundry out to dry, today tries to help the Obama campaign’s class warfare efforts by talking about Ann Romney’s equestrian hobby, which both the headline and the very first paragraph of the Times’ story points out, is “pricey.”

This is an article, I am sure, that will be of interest to Bruce Spiingsteen, whose daughter demonstrates her own equestrian skills every summer in the Hamptons.

We still do not know much about Barack Obama’s past, or his wife’s — we know only what they want us to, and the incurious media remains…incurious — but we know about Mitt Romney’s misguided hijinks from 50 years ago, his church’s misbegotten “militia” from 150 years ago, and now Ann Romney — who by the way has “never worked a day in her life” — gets an examination of past litigation (from which she was eventually dropped) examined, with a lengthy look at her love of equestrian dressage.

Really, this is a nothingburger of a story, but the examination of past litigation was really just an excuse for the paper to deliver a subliminal message: Oooooo…this wealthy person has a “pricey” hobby, while you’re eating a bologna sandwich and realizing you can’t even afford a “staycation.”

You know what else is a really “pricey” hobby?

Ted Kennedy, sailing the New England coast, his view of Nantucket unobstructed by ocean wind farms

John Kerry’s sailing yacht

Someone really needs to tell the press — and the Democrats they serve — that every time they want to play class-warfare by illustrating the offensiveness of the rich and “pricey” lifestyle of Mitt Romney, they will have to deal with illustrations of rich Kennedys on “pricey” sailboats; rich John Kerry’s “pricey” sailboats; rich Nancy Pelosi boarding a “pricey” private jet; rich Charlie Rangel napping at his “pricey” Costa Rican villa; rich Jon Corzine — somehow not in jail or even under investigation — hanging at his “pricey” summer house by the water, not far from rich Katie Couric’s “pricey” new digs; rich Michelle Obama vacationing somewhere exclusive and “pricey” and elite.

Really, the class warfare thing is very ill-considered, small-spirited and ultimately self-defeating. Most people do not begrudge the rich their “pricey” playthings, and many, many of the people seeking to sow these seeds of resentment are themselves the rich men and women of the media (who were not always considered the social equals of the elites, by the way) living lives quite out-of-touch with the lives most of us lead. When very rich people sneer at other very rich people — who just happen to belong to a different tribe — for the offense of being rich, it’s just a weird and self-indicting cognitive dissonance.

Wouldn’t it be better if we talked about creating jobs so more people can pursue their own potentialities and find their own pleasant hobbies?

John Nolte angrily notes:

The Los Angeles Times refuses to disclose the contents of a video tape in its possession that reportedly shows Barack Obama lavishing praise on his friend Rashid Khalidi, a close associate of Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat, at a 2003 Chicago dinner party sponsored by the Arab American Action Network and attended by Bill Ayers. The Times does, however, have all kinds of time to vet Ann Romney, going so far as to dig into a lawsuit she was part of involving a horse . . . At over the 1300 words — which is 1300 more than The Times has given the explosive allegation that the Obama campaign bribed Reverend Wright in 2008 — the piece purports to be a profile of a woman suffering from MS who finds what the headline calls, the “pricey private world” of dressage, therapeutic. But the language of the article is pure sneering smear and an obvious attempt to aid and abet the Obama campaign’s crusade to define the Romneys as out of touch elitists who can’t possibly understand the problems of the average American — you know, like a community organizer turned failed president can.

Silly Nolte; doesn’t he know that the only way to get the press to do their jobs is to put Republicans in office?