This can’t be happening. It can’t.

But it is. ABC News, the same network and news department that gave us Charles Gibson’s on-camera sandbagging of Sarah Palin, is calling Barack Obama an elitist.

The hell you say. You must be reading their report wrong.

Nope. Get this: in a column on the ABC News website, Matt Negrin describes a fundraising dinner held for Obama by Sarah Jessica Parker and Anna Wintour this way:

Fixing the economy will be put off for a few hours this evening: President Obama will be busy shaking down some celebriguests attending a fundraising dinner hosted by Sarah Jessica Parker and Anna Wintour at Parker’s New York City home.

Wait, it gets better.        

Tickets cost $40,000, about as much as the average person makes in a year. For donating all that money, what kind of party favors do these guests get? We can’t afford to attend ourselves to find out firsthand, and even if we could, journalistic principles would bar us from going in the first place.

And even better:

So we’re left to imagine what Obama’s uber supporters are paying for: (To be clear — this is from our imagination.) For $10,000: Matthew Broderick will sit next to you. For $5,000, you’ll share a table with Will Smith. For $50, Joe Biden will watch you eat and tell you it’s a ‘big f**king meal.’ The standard dinner will be overseen by Michelle Obama and will consist of locally grown herbs, low-fat beet-garnished eggplant and a corn-and-soybean protein shake. For $4.50, you could get a tasty dinner from Burger King.

For $15,000: You might get a flattering profile in Vogue — though it’ll cost another $15,000 for that profile to remain online once the editors kill the link. For $2,000: Obama will give you a personal shout-out at the beginning of his speech. For $4,000, he’ll serenade you with three seconds of Al Green. For bundling a half-million dollars for his re-election campaign, he’ll make you the ambassador to England.

Donate $30,000, and you’ll get the cell phone number of super PAC major domo Bill Burton, but only after working through a series of increasingly complex clues to throw the Federal Election Commission off track. For $9,000: Mayor Cory Booker will light your table on fire, then carry you out of the house on his shoulders. And for an extra two grand, he’ll write you a job recommendation for Bain Capital.

And then Negrin slips the knife right between Obama’s shoulder blades: “If Fifth Avenue is packed and you’re running late, for $5,000 the president will call you in your car and tell you that ‘the traffic is doing fine.'”

If ABC News is now calling Obama elitist, what’s next? Chris Matthews telling us that his leg doesn’t get the same thrill anymore?

God help us.