President Obama begins his 10-day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard today, the third year in a row he has taken his summer holiday in one of America’s most expensive resorts. During his time there he will be experiencing the kind of luxury that the vast majority of ordinary Americans can only dream about: Barack Obama will be staying in a compound which costs more to rent for a single week than most American households earn in a year.

In previous years Obama’s expensive vacations have attracted relatively little attention from the US media, with the exception of Michelle Obama’s trip to southern Spain last August, which led to her being dubbed a “modern-day Marie Antoinette” by one columnist. This year, however, even some flagships of the liberal mainstream media have been raising eyebrows. The Washington Post’s coverage for example has been unusually critical, for a publication that usually shies away from making an issue out what it would traditionally view as the president’s private life