So we’ve heard a lot recently about the mortage meltdown and how poor innocent families are being shoved out of their homes by big evil banks and predatory lenders. That’s the story line we’ve come to know and love and, in reality, it’s gotten very little resistance in the media.

So little resistance has it gotten that even politicians are taking up the cause-celebre and trying to figure out a way to “bail out” all these unfortunate souls and keep them from losing their precious homes.

Let’s see how genuine they are. The New York Times had a fascinating article today about a group of people who, and I’m only guessing this, those “bail ‘em out” folks wouldn’t probably be interested in helping out at all.

GREENWICH, Conn. — This wooded town of roughly 60,000 on Long Island Sound — home to dozens of hedge funds, many millionaires and more than a few billionaires — is one of the wealthiest enclaves in the country. But even Greenwich is not immune to the wave of home foreclosures sweeping the nation.

On Stanwich Road, for example, a house worth $2.6 million is close to going on the block. On Hettiefred Road, the owner of a 2,720-square-foot, four-bedroom colonial featuring a luxury kitchen, swimming pool and tennis court, has been threatened with foreclosure for months. Several dozen other owners in Greenwich have received foreclosure notices this year.

But there is a difference from most other communities. Auctioning off such homes is a far greater challenge here than elsewhere, as affluent but cash-squeezed owners often find ways to delay losing their homes, sometimes by coming up with just enough to make last-minute payments avoiding a final sale — for a while, anyway.

Just ask John Thygerson, who parked his Jeep sport utility vehicle in front of the empty house on Hettiefred Road on the flawless spring day last Saturday.

As a foreclosure auctioneer, he was scheduled — for the third time since January — to sell the house. But the owner, a construction business owner who has fallen on hard times, made a last-minute mortgage payment and the foreclosure was postponed yet again.

So Mr. Thygerson was there to shoo prospective buyers off the property, nod at inquisitive neighbors and stake out a new spot for a fourth set of foreclosure signs after the first three had been mysteriously torn down.

“We never had a case that had gone through three separate sales attempts,” he said, still dazed that the auction failed to take place. “Greenwich being Greenwich, foreclosures are a rare occurrence.”

Rare, perhaps, but not unheard-of, as the housing industry collapse starts to claim victims among the affluent. Personal traumas like business reversal, illness and divorce play a role. There’s no real pattern, with people as diverse as builders, restaurateurs and poker players at risk of losing their homes.

The town, which typically has about half a dozen foreclosure notices each month, recorded 34 filings in January, according to RealtyTrac.

Wow. A sixfold increase in foreclosure filings in one month.

So the question is, do we bail these folks out too? I mean, the egalitarian in me is all about helping out those less fortunate, so how do we justify not helping these folks out?

Oh right. We just say “Well, they make enough.”

I’m not saying we should bail anyone out, but how do you decide who deserves a bailout and who doesn’t? Obviously if the standard is that you bail out those who can’t afford their homes, a lot of people in this article who own houses like the one at the top of this post do, indeed, qualify.

Something to think about.