Dr. Jill et Fils Go Shopping

It's "news" only because of how the Secret Service treated the common folk

In case you haven’t seen this video, here’s your chance to see Doctor Jill and Hunter Biden on their brief vacation shopping trip to Los Olivos, California, a charming little town in the Santa Ynez Valley that attracts tourists with its wineries and tasting rooms.

Ronald Reagan’s Rancho de Cielo is about 9 miles to the south, and Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch is about 5 miles to the north. The town stood in for Andy Griffith’s “Mayberry” in “Return to Mayberry,” and was featured in the oenophile film “Sideways.”

This isn’t a big story, and for many of us it won’t be the least bit surprising. It’s only “news” because of the way the team of ten or more Secret Service agents treated the crowd of ordinary citizens, citizens who seemed to be there to revere and fawn over the Bidens and bask in the proximity to “royalty” the way Brits used to turn out whenever Queen Elizabeth appeared in public.

To the Secret Service, whom we used to view as elite professionals (but now we know better!), the hoi polloi are like vermin to be gruffly and brusquely shooed out of the way of the high and mighty, and sometimes even physically shoved aside. Reports of the Bidens’ visit used terms like “peasants” and “plebes” to describe how ordinary citizens were viewed and treated by the Secret Service and its imperious protectees. Unlike in professional football, there were no penalties for unnecessary roughness, no matter how flagrant.

All-in-all, the Secret Service did a far better job of protecting the Bidens’ shopping excursion than they did of protecting Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania; the cynics among us will say that the agency followed its orders at both events! The video from Los Olivos seems to show only male Secret Service agents; make of that what you will; they may have been the same agents who were allegedly diverted from Trump’s rally in order to provide security for Doctor Jill.

The Biden party spent only about a half-hour in Los Olivos. The shortness of the visit may have been because Hunter discovered that, in a little wine country town of fewer than 1500 permanent residents, there was probably a dearth of both hookers and crack cocaine, and therefore nothing to hold his interest for more than thirty minutes.

ST