Monday 18 December 2006

Lady Diana

"Diana died at almost exactly the same time as Mother Teresa, and I found it very odd that someone who devouted her whole life to charitable service could be eclipsed in the world imagination by a party girl who also did charitable work off and on for a few short years, all the while mimicking her unfaithful husband by being likewise unfaithful, finally precipitating divorce outright."

Excellent comment by Ben Witherington on his blog. I remember only too well the extreme expressions of grief which poured out on the death of Diana, which I found strange then, and have come to see increasingly as a kind of pathological mass hysteria. The mood could be ugly to those who - like Queen Elizabeth of Britain - did not acquiesce in the mass grief. That, to my mind, makes it strange, bizarre - why are you not showing a proper expression of grief? It is like one of those alien movies of the 1950s where people are taken over, and woe betide anyone who does not "see the light". But the light had dimmed in Calcutta, thousands of miles away, and its passing was scarely noticed amidst the hype.


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