The Sunday New York Times devoted a 2,300-word front-page story by Trip Gabriel helpfully reminding everyone that the Romneys are really really rich. The ostensible subject of the pointless piece, "In Rarefied Sport, a View of the Romneys’ World," was Ann Romney's participation in "dressage," "in which horses costing up to seven figures execute pirouettes and other dancelike moves for riders wearing tails and top hats."
The Times, being a good liberal paper, of course consistently discourages ostentatious displays of wealth by never glorifying the lifestyles of rich and famous Manhattanites, and would certainly never try to make a buck off same.
Gabriel wrote:
As Ann Romney immersed herself in the elite world of riding over the last dozen years, she relied on Jan Ebeling as a trusted tutor and horse scout. In her, he found a deep-pocketed patron.
A German-born trainer and top-ranked equestrian, Mr. Ebeling was at ease with the wealthy women drawn to the sport of dressage, in which horses costing up to seven figures execute pirouettes and other dancelike moves for riders wearing tails and top hats.
....
Protective of their privacy, they may also have been wary of the kind of fallout that came after Mr. Romney’s mention of the “couple of Cadillacs” his wife owned and the disclosure of plans for a car elevator in the family’s $9 million beach house in California, which prompted criticism that Mr. Romney was out of touch with average Americans.
Mrs. Romney took up dressage at age 50 as a therapy for multiple sclerosis, but it soon became her passion. Riding, she has said, “sings to my soul.”
Gabriel then spent many paragraphs picking through a convoluted and fairly uneventful lawsuit somehow connected to the Romneys:
The couple’s ties to Mr. Ebeling, 53, have also led to a legal entanglement. In 2010, a San Diego woman sued the trainer, his wife and Mrs. Romney for fraud, claiming that the severity of a foot defect in a horse she bought from Mrs. Romney for $125,000 had been concealed. The case raised questions about whether the Ebelings, who acted as sales agents, intentionally covered up the animal’s condition, and if so, whether Mrs. Romney, a largely absentee owner, knew.
