Celebrity Is the Currency, But Privacy Is Priceless

The popular new reality-based television shows, like “Survivor” and “Big Brother,” depend on people being anxious to offer themselves as featured players. There seems to be no problem getting recruits. They must think it’s a lark, and possibly profitable, since the monetary reward for the victor, the contestant who endures and triumphs, is impressive--half a million, a million dollars. That would be a temptation for most of us.

But I have a caveat, perhaps an unpopular one given the ratings surge of these shows that makes exhibitionism a viable career option and voyeurism an evening’s entertainment. I offer a suggestion that privacy, the sanctified terrain of a person’s life, doesn’t have a monetary price. It should be held dear. Because once you open all the doors, once every aspect of your life becomes a communal affair, you can never return to who you were. It might seem like harmless entertainment, a ratings bonanza for the networks, but it’s a Faustian bargain.

I claim no objectivity here. When my father, Ronald Reagan, was elected president in 1980, my life became public property. In some weird, Stockholm-syndrome way, it made sense to me to further expose myself, my life, my past, my present, my family, by writing an autobiography and telling more than I should have.

I can’t get any of it back. You can’t reclaim privacy once it’s lost. And once the boundary lines have been demolished, it’s futile to beg for new ones. When my father’s Alzheimer’s was first made public in 1994, and I was asked extremely personal questions, I seized on the phrase, “zone of privacy.” As if there were one. It was like some sad joke--I was asking for something that didn’t exist. I knew it, and so did everyone else. I stopped saying it after a while.

There was a day in 1980, before the election, when I knew my life would never be the same. This was, in part, predicated on my certainty that my father would be the next president. I went down to the beach on a foggy afternoon. There was no one there, no other footprints. I drank in the solitude, tried to memorize it, because I knew soon it would be gone. Within months, I would have heavily armed men watching me, guarding me. It wasn’t a television show that I was auditioning for and could walk away from if I chose. It was beyond my control.

That afternoon, I wondered if the Secret Service agents would trudge along the beach in dark suits and shiny shoes. As it turned out, they dressed a bit more casually. But it didn’t diminish the effect of being watched, of not having solitude when I wanted it. It was a definite Big Brother experience, and there were no commercial breaks.

I’d like those appearing on these shows to consider this: Your lives will, at some point, include experiences, passages, that you will have to cope with emotionally. We all, at some point, lose loved ones, suffer upheavals. And we regain our emotional equilibrium by removing ourselves from the noise, the din of the world. But what if you’re not allowed that respite?

When my father was shot by John W. Hinckley Jr., the small bungalow I was living in was surrounded by the media. They had cameras, microphones, walkie-talkies. I could hear them out on the street, on the other side of the back gate. It was like being under siege.

I was trying to find out how badly my father was hurt. The possibility that he might have been mortally wounded was closing in, while the media was attempting to crash in on the privacy I desperately needed. The Secret Service was trying to get me and my siblings to Washington on something other than a commercial flight. When they finally arranged passage on a military transport plane, I literally had to dive through the back gate into a waiting car that had been pulled up close, with the door open. Getting into that car, the last sound I heard was a Los Angeles TV reporter shouting into a walkie-talkie, “She’s around back! Get back here!”

My family is a news story, and will continue to be. But we live in a time when privacy has lost its value, its currency; when it’s not regarded as an inalienable right. Is there a way of reporting the news without completely intruding on a person’s life, a family’s grief? Of course. Will such restraint happen? I doubt it.

Already, when rumors have erupted that my father has passed away, reporters have immediately phoned, asking if it was true that my father had died. When that does come, they won’t hesitate to swarm around with cameras and microphones.

Those of us who live with this kind of reality feel, at times, as if we are living on an island that is, periodically, invaded by hordes of camera-toting intruders who have no hesitation about barging in on our grief, our trying times. Unlike the TV show, no one will kick us off this island. We try to make the best of it.

As a writer, my survival method has been to write about what I want you to know and then run for cover before anyone can press for further details. It grates at my soul, which is why I think those who have a choice should consider carefully before relinquishing their privacy.

They probably won’t, though. After all, it’s a chance to be on television--and there is that money dangling out there. *