I mark this day as a milepost in the decline of Western Civilization in which Diana died a celebrity martyr, worshipped in death by millions for little more than her status as a celebrity. I know this is heresy to many, but I do not think she was a great, or even a particularly good person, joining her feckless husband in marital infidelity and not such a saint in the rest of her private life, either. Compare the global mourning for her and that for Mother Theresa, a woman who really dedicated her life to good works at supreme personal sacrifice.
Princess Anne did magnitudes more charity work than Diana without all the drama and without dragging the paparazzi around with her. It’s irony that the paparazzi ultimately were instrumental in Diana’s death.
The lesson here is don’t use a prozac addled drunk for a chauffer.
It’s not a competition, and I suspect Mother Teresa would be the last person to begrudge Diana her fame, or to envy it for herself. In all probability, she would have eschewed any mourning at all, since she truly believed she was bound for Glory.
That said, the fixation on a shallow, glamorous, but deeply flawed celebrity instead of a godly woman of deep conviction reflects more on us than it does on either the Princess or the Saint.
It was honestly the first time that people seriously went overboard, and it turned into an international media spectacle.
Thank goodness there was no social media back then.
It was nothing compared to the run-up to her marrying Prince Charles, it was all we heard about for months.