Like it or not – and I most certainly do not like it – the modern world is obsessed with “celebrity”. While some more or less public figures such as writers, singers, actors and others who are frequently in the public eye do not overtly court publicity and fame, but have it thrust upon them because of their achievement, they can still usually manage some degree of privacy. They can and frequently do retire to their guarded estates, private islands, resorts and other places to get away from people – or simply live in the places where they live where they are accorded a certain degree of if not anonymity, at least ‘distance’ from their neighbors. (I’m thinking particularly of the way Muhammed Ali has lived for decades in Berrien Springs, Michigan, where the townspeople are so jealous of his privacy that they won’t tell outsiders where his home is, and other such acts of protection from “the public”.)
Politicians, especially those running for national office, don’t have that luxury. Not only do they have to court publicity and fame – sometimes at huge cost to their families as well as themselves – they can’t do it from a distance. They have to be more or less “always on”, always speaking, always meeting more people, going more places, and becoming more widely known. That’s bad enough, but there’s a flip side to that kind of exposure, too.
The people who kill those people also become famous, in their way.
That’s a kind of instant celebrity of the most grotesque kind, isn’t it? And those people are out there; we all know it. If we’re going to have even a semblance of a representative democracy with “political leaders” that are in any way approachable, then those people have to be protected from the crazies. And while I generally favor “private” over “public” furnishing of anything, including security, in this imperfect world that we inhabit I have no problem with “early and often” provision of Secret Service protection to those folks. It’s the least we can do for them – even for the ones I despise.