Enough!!!!

Many times on these pages, Pettyfog has ranted about the fact that slanting the news isn't accomplished just by providing only one point of view. It is also accomplished -- and more effectively -- by media outlets CHOOSING to decide what IS news. And so it is that we are WALLOWING in the 10th anniversary of the death, in Paris, of a young woman who was, at one time, the Princess of Wales.

All of the morning "news" programs, all of the cable "news" programs, and certainly all of the print media are focusing on her death, her now-grown children, the pony who replaced her as princess, and the frumpy aging queen -- no, not that one -- who rewrote the lyrics of a soppy salute to a tragic American "princess" to make an even more soppy tribute to this one. And it goes on, and friggin' on.

Many who post here are too young to remember Diana's death as the gruesome never-ending media event that it was. It was as if we had lost Ronald Reagan, Billy Graham, Mother Theresa, and Willie Nelson all at the same time. 90% of network news was devoted to the event for almost a month; all of the talk programs featured what this meant to humanity and, a few years later, when A&E did their biography marathon on "people of the melinnium," there was Diana just a few rows behind Gutenberg, Copernicus, and Shakespeare.

Much time and energy was focused -- and is still being focused -- on the "tragic circumstances" of her death. So let's revisit them. She and her boyfriend -- MAF's son, by the way -- left a Paris nightclub well after midnight. Everyone in the party had been drinking, INCLUDING THE DRIVER. Off they went in their limousine at VERY high speeds through the Paris streets. In a tunnel, the drunken limo driver lost control of his vehicle and they crashed. Diana and her boyfriend were among the dead.

In the days that followed, our relentless quest to find someone to blame settled on those really at fault -- the press. No, not them. The TV and print journalists blamed not themselves but the free-lance photographers who follow famous people around, take their pictures, and sell them to newspapers and TV news shows. Yes, they were at fault. How was that possible? Evidently, Diana and her party had wanted to be unnoticed as they hit the Paris hotspots favored by celebrities. After all, why else would they go there? And so, in an effort to outrace those pesky photographers, the drunk behind the wheel lost control -- or fell asleep, who knows. The unanimous decision of guilt on the part of media and citizens on this side of the water -- BAD PAPPARAZZI; POOR DIANA.

Here's a connection that very few made at the time. Let's say that instead of losing control in that tunnel, the speeding limo had rear-ended a Citron. Let's say that that Citron held a family of four -- including two small children. Let's say that everyone in the limo survived, and that everyone in the Citron died a fiery death. What would have been the verdict then? How treasured would Diana have been now, ten years on? Yes, it didn't happen, but there was nothing that anyone did in that limo that guaranteed one outcome and not the other.

So, the wallowing will go on for a week, and then we'll do it again when one of the boys gets married. We'll do it again when the Queen -- yes, that one -- hits a milestone birthday. We'll do it again in ten years.

Now I don't give a crap what you guys on the other side of the pond do. This is your peculiar institution, and I'm really rather in favor of it. But there's something I don't understand about us over here in America. There's a war going on. The government is in turmoil. We have been under attack by excessive weather all year. The bees, whose pollination of crops is necessary to the very survival of the human race, are disappearing. FULHAM HAVE ONLY THREE POINTS FROM FOUR MATCHES. And we, so proud of our republic, so proud that we threw off the bonds of monarchy more than 230 years ago, are still worshiping at the altar of "a modern day princess."

ENOUGH!

 

Sorry, Martin; didn't mean to mis-speak. I did very poorly in Biology as I remember.

And Andy, I did say -- in relation to the monarchy -- that I was "really rather in favor of it." It's not the same for me since the Queen Mum died, but hey ... . I was just commenting on how we over here react.