ash really really really disdains aristocracy, especially of the official persuasion. Here are a series of three letters demonstrating why.
9 9 97
My first reaction to the news of Princess Diana’s death was, “Oh, no – watch out for the media blitz.” It wasn’t bad enough that reports of this dodo new boyfriend were invading my oblivion. Now she has to become a cult figure by dying young. What I was not prepared for was the ubiquitous use of the word “we” on the part of the commentators: “We” think, “we” feel, “we” loved her because…How presumptuous. So it is heartening to me that out here in the real world, beyond the realm of the media, no one seems to be talking about Diana. Maybe “we” are too busy tending to our own precious lives.
I skipped the wedding and won’t watch the funeral. Will someone please tell me when the hysterical aftermath has dissipated so I can turn on my TV again?
Royalty.
7 14 98
It would have been Princess Diana’s 37th birthday had she lived. Instead, the woman seemingly in a perpetual state of bashful bewilderment despite years of media existence is a romantic myth, frozen beyond the grasp of time.
Too bad. She had only begun the process of discovering humanitarianism made possible by unlimited, unearned wealth. Royalty – the society of accidental, obsolete, curtsying freeloaders – was her underwriter.
The nanny, upon her return to England, was interviewed by the same journalist, in the same location, as Diana once was. “Outrageous!” cried the same British public who once supporter her, in an apparent group conversion to objective reality. “She’s being treated like royalty.”
The British may be excused, if patronizingly, for their national inferiority complex. Nevertheless, Diana, while certainly no criminal, was ordinary to the core. Louise Woodward, undoubtedly a criminal, is even more ordinary. Neither deserves celebrity.
Royalty should not be treated like royalty.
8 1 98
Ready or not, here it comes: one year without Diana. Tributes will abound in commemorative issues of magazines and newspaper articles will be printed on the status of the investigation.
Other people died on the same day. Some were good and some weren’t so good. Some contributed to society and others didn’t. A few cheapened the inherent dignity of humanity. Regardless, their families still grieve, friends will note the occasion, and a small percentage will be remembered in Happy Ads.
Otherwise no one will know the difference.
