I think there's a significant difference between your own front yard and the local park or shopping centre, and an actually harmless animal and a legitimately potentially deadly animal. Do whatever you like in your own back yard, I think we'd all agree with that. Opinions may vary about playing with a python in your own front yard, opinions may vary about taking a harmless snake to a park or shopping centre (almost exclusively when people do this it's for narcissistic reasons, as it clearly was in the topic of this thread, not that narcissism is entirely bad), but taking a deadly snake to a place where the public may interact with it without their choice is completely irresponsible. If you really must take one to a park for photographs etc, at least do it discretely, don't advertise what you're doing, don't merrily go on telly doing it.
Despite the myth herpers spew that humans have no natural fear of snakes, the reality is that most humans do have a genetic predisposition to fear snakes. Snakes naturally kill more humans than any other animal (unless you include diseases from mosquitoes, which pushes snakes to #2), so it makes perfect sense that it's in our DNA to fear them. For the sake of our public image we need to keep this in mind. And, potentially deadly species are literally potentially deadly. When faced with snakes, terrified humans act unpredictably as do dogs etc, and this does pose an actual danger.