What would happen today?

Morse followed the mourners as they returned to Einstein’s house at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton. He was the only photographer on the scene during these moving moments.

But when he returned to the Life offices, Morse learned that the magazine wasn’t going to publish the pictures. At the request of Einstein’s son, Hans Albert Einstein, Life respected the family’s privacy while they mourned. Morse and the magazine both forgot about the pictures until recently.

There are two factors here. First, even if one of the respected news outlets respected the wishes of the family, the paparazzi would still be selling pictures to the highest bidder. They--and most of us, to be honest--seem to believe that any public figure is completely public and that we have the right to know every little bit about that person even in what they imagine to be their private moments. Is Aging Actress getting a little chunky? If she is, we’ll know it because someone with a ridiculously powerful telephoto lens will spy her in a two piece on a “private” beach. That intrusion from those fleas is driven by a public insatiable for details about our celebrities.

This isn’t new, of course. There was a time when agents would do things like providing details about one client’s life (a stint in jail, for example) in exchange for gossip writers ignoring information about other clients (news of homosexuality was carefully guarded). But the extent of the intrusions seem to have increased with time and technology and public figures now have very little reasonable expectation of privacy in now about nil.

There’s another change, though, that is even more disturbing to me: the near-insistence on public exposure from those same figures and from people who want to be celebrities. If you don’t have a clear understanding of just how far people will go to find their own tiny sliver of fame, you haven’t seen the abomination that is Daisy of Love. If you don’t have a clear understanding of just what the American public will watch and call entertainment, you aren’t acquainted with TLC’s lineup of shows about the intimate lives of little people or the fading trend of shows about families with more than the normal complement of rug rats.

These days, the family and friends of the deceased make a public show of their mourning.

These days, Jennifer Love Hewitt feels that it is entirely normal to share her adventures in Vajazzling--which is, if not trashy, then definitely of questionable artistic merit. Where does too much information actually mean too much information anymore?

I’m a private person and I’m not a person who is given to indiscriminate intimacies. I find myself wishing there were more people like me in the world.