The White House: Do not enter!
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  • The White House: Do not enter!

The good news is Americans are reaching out to politicians. The bad news is Americans are reaching out to politicians by breaking into the White House. This morning, Secret Service Director Julia Pierson submitted herself to public humiliation in front of Congress. And for good reason! A knife-wielding man named Omar Jose Gonzalez successfully broke into the White House before being tackled just a few dozen feet away from the First Family's living quarters. If this news weren't so sick-making, it would almost be an absurdist Hollywood pitch—John Carpenter's Halloween set at the White House, concluding with a shot of President Joe Biden. Part of the reason why Gonzalez got through the Secret Service's many traps and alert systems is that the White House staff has gotten lazy about it—usher complaints about a noisy alarm box led to those alarms being silenced, for example. Up until this month, the front door of the White House didn't lock automatically, which, I suppose, was a cute bit of symbolism (our door is always open to you, America!) but is in practice an unbelievably dumb idea.

The Secret Service has been publicly screwing the pooch for some time now. Besides the sex scandals—because, hey, who hasn't had a dalliance with a Colombian prostitute every now and again?—they've been bumbling one of their their primary jobs: Protecting the home of the president of the United States. News just broke that it took the Service four days to realize that a guy shot at the White House in 2011.

We are not living in some golden age of assaults on the White House. Time magazine recently reported that there are roughly a dozen attempts to to jump the White House fence every year. It's probably the most famous street address on the planet—even Sarah Palin almost knows it—and the home of the most powerful human in the world. Of course the White House is always a target for solitary weirdos, for desperate men, for lonely men who feel like they're the least powerful people in the world. (Yes, mansplainers, it's almost always men.) It has been under assault from the air at least twice—by helicopter and plane—and the site of a spectacular Christmas Day hostage situation. Others simply walked in during celebrations and mingled with the big shots, including President Obama himself.

Lunatics are always aiming at the president and his family, hoping to make a splash and force the world to notice them for once. We don't hear about all the intruders who fail, and we're not supposed to see the many layers of security measures that are in place. Because I've attended presidential events for The Stranger, I've been screened by the Service on multiple occasions. I can tell you that they are very thorough: bomb-sniffing dogs, metal detectors, dozens of agents lurking everywhere, eyes scanning the crowd for anything out of the ordinary. The time I shook Mitt Romney's hand, no fewer than four agents stared at me before and after the handshake with eyes that seemed to plumb the depths of my soul.

When I attended the Democratic National Convention in 2012, I had to arrive hours before President Obama's speech, and so I was passing the time by talking to another reporter. In the middle of our conversation about the weirdness of the convention, she said casually to me, "I just noticed all the snipers." Without moving my head, I turned my eyes upward to the rafters of the Time Warner Cable Arena and I saw shadows skittering around on the beams up there like cartoon ninjas, holding rifles. I swear one of them noticed me noticing them. I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong—I was looking toward the ceiling in a sports arena, for Christ's sake, with a valid press pass and a backpack that had been thoroughly screened—but still. It was one of the most terrifying heartbeats of my life.