Sunday, May 27, 2012

‘Vetting’ Ann Romney

‘Vetting’ Ann Romney

There are days when the work of our media brethren leaves us both breathless and ashamed.

Case in point this past week’s purported Los Angeles Times “expose” on the fact that Ann Romney loves horses.

The article itself is so agenda-driven as to make a mockery of legitimate political reporting.

Part of it was taken from a deposition in a lawsuit involving a horse Mrs. Romney had sold — a case she was later dropped from as a defendant.

It begins: “It was the end of a long day in a stuffy Simi Valley office building. Ann Romney had been under oath for more than four hours... Romney was getting annoyed.

That really is that really is irritating, she said when the opposing attorney implied she didn’t know who looked after her horse in Moorpark, Calif., when she was at her home in Boston. ‘Of course I know who was looking after my horse. You’re just trying to irritate me.’

“It was a rare moment of pique for Ann Romney, not meant for public consumption, and one that opened a window onto the private world of the would-be first lady.”

Yes, that was it — her “moment of pique.” Well it was no H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks of a moment, as her husband might have put it, but it gave the L.A. Times a chance to write about “pricey horses” and the “fussy Olympic sport” of dressage, which it also noted “attracts some of the world’s richest people.”

At least the Times acknowledged that Mrs. Romney took up the sport, which, they admitted “requires tremendous muscle control” as therapy for dealing with the fatigue of multiple sclerosis.

However, the newspaper also insists the deposition “displays her fear of privacy loss, and a depth of feeling for a handful of extraordinarily expensive horses that she compares to maternal love.”

Yes, she did say that she “loved” the horse in question — something that apparently shocked the Times reporter (who clearly never owned a dog or cat). But no doubt there’s room in the loving embrace of this mother of five sons for affection for many of God’s creatures, even the ever-controversial dog Seamus.

And yes, the Romneys are wealthy — wealthy enough to own horses. That is hardly a state secret — not after the candidate released his tax returns.

But this level of partisan attack — on the wife of a candidate, on the news pages of a major metropolitan paper — is a new low.

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