Word: diana
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...subtitle on CNN was suddenly saying Princess Diana dead. And for just an hour or so, it felt like November 1963. "This will be a fixing moment in your lives," I intoned to my two sons (I was thinking, naturally, about her two sons). "You will always remember where you were and who you were with when you heard this news." Princess Diana dead: it seemed brutally inordinate. Because Diana had never been hard news, until then. Diana, in every sense, had always been soft. For once I found myself longing for a euphemism: passed away, perhaps, or succumbed...
...being relinquished. And so it was. It makes your shins shudder to imagine the atrocious physics of the impact, as the Mercedes transformed itself into a weapon of blunt force. Next, the swat team of photographers and the final photo shoot. Whether or not the paparazzi helped cause Diana's death, they undoubtedly defiled its setting. They took pictures of the dying woman. How could they? But they did. And now the two sons, the princes, face not only the loss of a loving and lovable mother but also a bereavement uniquely contaminated by the market forces of fame...
...moment examine the nature of Diana's fame. One might call it a collateral celebrity, because it relied on no discernible contribution (except to the gaiety, and now the grief, of nations). Lady Diana Spencer attracted the love of the introverted heir to the English throne. And that was all. Brightness of eye, whiteness of tooth, a colluding smile, a certain transparency, a vividness, an exposed vulnerability: it was enough for him, and it was enough for us. Madonna sings. Grace Kelly acted. Diana simply breathed. She was a social-page figure who became a cover girl. One can soberly...
...certainly believed she had a talent: a talent for love. She felt she could inspire it, transmit it, increase its general sum. It has been said about her (what hasn't been said about her?) that she adopted various charities as "accessories." But the causes Diana was most strongly identified with--AIDS, hospices, land mines--demanded more than a reflexive commitment. There is no question that she made a difference to the homosexual community, in England and perhaps elsewhere; her support came at a crucial time, in defiance of tabloid opinion as well as royal prudence. Yet the fact remains...
...Diana could touch and feel; perhaps she believed she could heal. Watching her on television, jolting with tears as she listened to a speech praising and defending her work, one saw signs of an almost delusional inner drama. If power corrupts the self, then absolute fame must surely distort it. Her enthusiasms were crankish, hypochondriac, self-obsessive: aromatherapy, colonic irrigation, the fool's gold of astrology. Diana, I repeat, was "soft" news. She caused sensations by wearing a party dress or by gaining a kilo of weight. She made headlines with every wave of her hand, every twitch...