What Has Chelsea Clinton Done to Deserve the Attention Lavished on Her Wedding?

An article in today's Guardian sported a photo of Bill Clinton walking daughter Chelsea down the aisle at her wedding. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/01/no-oprah-or-obama-at-chelsea-clinton-wedding. I suspect that nearly every newspaper in the world will be running stories about Chelsea Clinton's wedding today (August 1, 2010), and possibly for days to come. And why not? She's earned the attention. After all, she was born to prominent U.S. politicians, and then she...well... O.K., what has she done to deserve all of this attention?

As I recall, during the Clinton presidency it was taboo for the media to even speak about Chelsea (a courtesy from the news corps that the Bush girls did not experience). So her gawky teen years were lived largely free of unwanted photographic coverage. When her parents had very public marital problems, there was not a whole lot of coverage of Chelsea's reaction to the events.

Chelsea Clinton's first - and only, to my knowledge - step into the limelight was her public campaigning for her mother's run at the Presidency. Other than that, she has stayed out of the news and led as normal a life as possible, it seems.

In America's media-soaked culture, though, it appears that simply being the child of a President is enough to make one a lifelong celebrity -- especially if the President in question is a darling of the media, as Bill Clinton seems to be. For Chelsea, then, simply being the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton ensured that her wedding would be a massive media event.

As the Guardian piece cited above notes, the Clintons took steps to reduce media access to the wedding. Few celebrities were invited, and security ensured that no uninvited photographs would sneak in. But this secrecy probably only added to the public's interest in the event. It certainly did not diminish it.