Walls

Here's a story we've seen over and over: Some rando from  Virginia was arrested  for crashing a car into Taylor Swift’s New York City apartment building. His goal, you see, was to get into the building and enjoy time with Ms Swift.

Morgan Mank, 31, (they do give them perfect creep names, don't they?) was arrested last week. He had driven the wrong way on the street in the Tribeca section where Swift owns a townhouse and also a couple of apartments in an adjoining building.

Although police were able to confirm that Mank was the man who drove his Jerkmobile into the lobby of the building, they could not confirm reports that he was telling the police he would not leave until he had his Taylor time that day.

The law took Mank to a hospital for an evaluation, later arresting him on charges of driving while intoxicated and driving while ability impaired. 

Swift is a young woman of vast talent and popularity among all sort of people - country fans, pop fans, young, old. It's great that people love her and stream her songs and attend her concerts and buy her merchandise, but that's where being a fan should end. 

But no. Swift also has homes in California and Rhode Island, and everywhere she goes, these people are trying to be near her, to such a dangerous extent that she told Elle magazine that she carries army-grade bandage dressing "for gunshot or stab wounds." 

"I've had a lot of stalkers show up to the house armed. So we have to think that way," she told the magazine.

Isn't that nice, that a girl born on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania is blessed with such looks and talent that people just can't leave her alone and admire her many gifts from a proper distance?

Here I am, saying that one of the many problems in this old world is that we don't know where the walls - figurative and otherwise - are. I'm sure Ms Swift appreciates the well wishes of her fans. They have provided her with the wherewithal to have all those houses and all the accouterments of fame.

But is it worth it, when you can't leave the house to run to the $1.25 Tree without packing battleground wound dressings and being accompanied by beefy security types?

Just Google "Taylor Swift stalker" and sit down for a long reading session. 

And of course, she is not the only one. There was actress Rebecca Schaeffer, who was killed by crazed stalker Robert Bardo in Hollywood in 1989. He had previously stalked other young female celebrities, and stabbed Ms Schaeffer in the doorway of her home.

He returned to his hometown of Tucson where he was arrested by Police Chief Peter Ronstadt (brother of Linda) while running in and out of traffic. Brought back to Los Angeles for trial, he was prosecuted by Marcia Clark, who later served as lead prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson murder case. 

She was successful in the Bardo case and he now spends his days and nights, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the Avenal State Prison in Avenal, California.

People like Mr Mank should be there with him until they learn where the walls are.