July 21, 2007
Celebrities Homes vs. Politicians Home
~Celebrities of a certain age are often more than happy to invite 'news' cameras into their homes. While tours of the mansions of dead and alive celebrities are a lucrative tourist attraction in and around Southern California (Hong Kong and Bollywood also?)
But politicians are not rushing to capitalize on this form of nobless oblige and their constituents exhibit no sense of an experience lost.
Certainly there are many homes of America's leaders that have been designated state or is it federal historic sites. But that's then, how do they live now?
I couldn't find one photo of President Bush's supposed residence on his Crawford, Texas ranch. For reasons that must go beyond security concerns-- photos of the former homes of politicians or of elected officials long dead are also not online--magazines and newspapers have no interest in showing America's citizens poliiticians' homes.
We might all agree that the wealth showcased by these their most expensive consumer choices can only further resentment among the masses--I mean how obvious--but that worldly insight doesn't really explain how so few images of their dwellings continue not to be digitally produced and published.
Maybe since 9/11 distribution of photos of the personal property of all local, state and federal employees, appointed or elected, is a crime punishable under certain provisions of the Patriot Act?
While for the years before 9/11 there was a 'gentlemen's agreement' by print then electronic media to ignore our leaders' material possessions, the gifts from grateful constituents and wooing lobbyists?
Perhaps the bomb-throwing anarchists of the late 19th century labor struggles are still remembered by the families that make-up America's '1000 points of light'?
Perhaps America's citizens are simply not interested in what their leaders' own?