Nope, the MSM has learned nothing from the subprime debacle, stimulus-palooza, and the foreclosure frenzy. They are still printing sob stories to elicit sympathy for borrowers who don’t deserve it.

Check this out from the San Francisco Chronicle. Cue the world’s smallest violin:

Foreclosed family’s last goodbye to home Joann Gardner sat forlornly on her living room floor, waiting for the final step in her home’s foreclosure process. The lender’s representative was due any moment to give her “cash for keys,” a transaction in which she would deliver her family home vacant in exchange for an incentive payment. “I’m glad it’s done,” Gardner said wearily. “I just want to sit down and have some Hennessy.” Only days earlier, the house had been jammed with boxes and bags holding the worldly goods her family had accumulated during 54 years in the cramped Oakland bungalow. Now it was entirely empty, the possessions in storage or donated to the Salvation Army. Gardner’s elderly parents, both suffering from dementia and other ailments, had moved a week earlier to a local board-and-care home whose cost would be covered by their Social Security and pension checks. Gardner, who has been her parents’ full-time care provider for the past 18 months, planned to move in with her boyfriend in Vallejo and look for a job, perhaps something at Costco.

Buried into the article, after all the gnashing of teeth, we find out the nitty-gritty:

Joann’s parents, Johnnie Gardner, 87, and Estelle, 88, bought the two-bedroom in the Sobrante Park neighborhood in 1954 for $11,500. His salary as an electrician at the Oakland naval shipyard allowed them to make the payments. But in recent years, Joann and her brother refinanced it several times for increasingly larger amounts. The final refinance at the end of 2006 left the family owing $454,000. The monthly payments of $3,362 exceeded the household income of $3,144. What happened to the money from all the refinances? Gardner can’t quite say. Some went to paying off credit cards; some was eaten up in huge loan fees. What is clear is that the family has not made a mortgage payment since December 2006.

What the…?!?!?!?!

The money wasn’t going to her parents’ health-care expenses. She didn’t have a job. “Some” went to credit card bills. “Some” was “eaten up” by loan fees.

And the rest?

She can’t even cite some other catastrophic cost– or stupid decision like the Extreme Makeover family made — to explain how $454,000 was pissed away.

And I’m supposed to feel my heartstrings tugged?

All together now: Boo-freaking-hoo.