Every now and again I see yet another news
story about how the death
of Diana (neé Spencer, subsequently Princess of Wales, subsequently
divorced) was orchestrated by the British royal family, some branch of the
British secret services or some connected body. This drivel really annoys me.
Not just because it's a heaving pile of steaming nonsense so much as because the
toss-pots who're flogging this dead horse are among those actually guilty of
causing her death.
Personally I detest the whole culture of celebrity. I've nothing against
the people who end up being celebrities, except in so far as they go out of
their way to seek that attention. It's the popular
media's attention to
them that provokes my ire; that, and the public's willingness to uncritically
purchase their reporting of this utter drivel. That's what killed Diana. It's
also what made it impossible for Charles to find a bride acceptable to the
public
at large. Every lass he ever courted – prior to Diana
– had her prior private life dragged through the sewers and every possible
prudish opportunity for objection to her turned into an inescapable obstacle.
If Diana had any prior darlings, they had the decency to keep their mouths shut
about that past; which let her be eligible to marry Charles but, at the same
time, ensured the inevitability of the virginal purity
myths that got
attached to her and, inevitably, led to the huge commercial value of any picture
bearing on the veracity of that myth.
Mr. Murdoch and his peers know perfectly well that any tawdry drivel, no
matter how irrelevant, can be peddled as news
as long as: it involves
people that the public has heard of; and might plausibly be construed as
involving sex. Mr. Murdoch and his peers also know that folk buy more
newspapers that include pictures of women (even if very nicely dressed, but
especially when dressed revealingly), at least if they've heard of the women in
question. Mr. Murdoch and his peers are great champions of leaving markets to
regulate themselves without government interference, based on the rationale that
market forces shall crush that of which the public disapproves and promote that
which suits the public. They have, consequently, no right to feign ignorance of
the link between market forces and how folk respond to them. Yet Mr. Murdoch
and his peers control the very media which – unless they are fraudulently
representing the service they represent to their advertisers – alter the
way that the public responds to market forces.
The mass media (e.g. Mr. Murdoch) were unequivocally willing to pay the
paparazzi for any and all pictures that intruded – even if improperly
– into Diana's private life. They were so because the public at large was
more inclined to purchase journals that reported on such tawdry drivel than
papers which actually published news. Gossip is more
interesting
than reality. Consequently, wherever Diana and her friends
went, there were paparazzi loitering with intent to catch pictures.
Unsurprisingly, such intrusions into her life became such an obnoxious burden
that she – and those around her – took increasingly desperate
measures to avoid this unwanted attention. It is no surprise that she
eventually left a relatively safe haven under such circumstances of haste (in
the hopeless attempt to avoid the inevitable paparazzi) that the driver drove
recklessly (in a desperate attempt to escape the pack of hounds on his heels)
and thereby came to such misadventure as to kill everyone in his vehicle.
Consequently, the following are unequivocally facts:
I would also add that everything I've seen appears to support the view that the British royal family desperately wanted to make Diana a non-story and was bitterly upset that the whole saga ended in tragedy. After all, her sons are members of that family and, indeed, heirs to the throne.
So, if you're still buying the newspapers, or watching the news
channels, that report conspiracy theories about how the royal family or MI5 or
whoever – aside from those very media corporations themselves –
conspired to have Diana killed: YOU are aiding and abetting the
international conspiracy of media magnates who (perhaps unwittingly, but they
most emphatically should have known what they were doing) caused Diana's death.
Please stop doing this, before anyone else suffers at YOUR hands.