Best of British woo!

[LeftishBrit]

America has the MIHOP theories; Britain has all the conspiracy theories about Princess Diana's death. Mr. Al-Fayed, who has been pressing for a new investigation for ages and now got one, has publicly accused Tony Blair, Prince Philip, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, of being involved in her 'murder'.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/witness-for-the-prosecution-prince-philip-is-a-nazi-tony-blair-was-in-on-it-so-was-prince-charles-i-believe-my-son-and-princess-diana-were-murdered-784028.html


The poor fellow is clearly an unstable man who has become more unstable through losing his son. Unfortunately, the tabloid press are exploiting it for all it's worth. The Daily Mail produced a headline saying in large print that Blair and Prince Philip ordered the murder, with much smaller print saying that this was an allegation by Al-Fayed. Expect this to run and run. No doubt there'll be people on DU who will take it seriously.

[mr blur]

1. It gives all the Mail and Express readers a problem -

they aren't used to the owner of Harrods being a lunatic.

I like his allegation that Phil the Greek was a racist Nazi - half right, anyway. Oh, and the royals are "a ‘Dracula family'"

[moggie]

2. Which is obviously nonsense

Reptoids don't suck blood, do they?

Most of the front pages I saw today suggested that he's a nut. Except the Daily Express, of course, the paper of record for people who shout at invisible enemies in the street.

[onager]

3. Dumb American Input: when I watched "The Queen..."

Most of the time, I found myself in the somewhat alarming position of agreeing with the characters playing the royal family.

Who were those lunatics outside Buckingham Palace, and how did they find the time to sleep there for 2 or 3 nights while weeping over a bird-brained narcissist?

Full Disclosure: I couldn't stop myself from reading Tina Brown's trashbook The Diana Chronicles.

Brown points out that the cranky old bastard Prince Philip has probably done more charity work than Diana and her PR team ever dreamed of. But the Prince doesn't go around with his own personal cameramen, recording his good deeds for TV and the weeping masses. Just the opposite.

He is certainly capable of privately raising hell when irked. Brown tells about the head of the Royal Protection Service being fired in a scandal allegedly involving a "gay hustler." Prince Philip wrote "blistering" letters of protest to the (then Tory) government. When the man was fired anyway, Philip personally continued to invite him to every major social function.

[mr blur]

4. But... but... she was The People's Bimbo!

Poor Mad Tony said so. She never went to the toilet and she would have been Queen of All our Hearts. :puke:

[moggie]

5. There were a lot of lunatics, of course

There's never a shortage of lunatics, and the confluence of celebrity, royalty and tragedy was irresistible to many emotional vampires. But appearances can be deceptive. For every person weeping and rending their garments, there were others who just wanted to be there to witness history, dry-eyed. The funeral drive passed not far from where I live, so on the day I walked up to the main road to watch it pass (and I'm as anti-royalist as you can get). There was a huge procession of people making their way there, and they had something of a carnival atmosphere: it seemed to me that they regarded it as a spectacle to enliven an otherwise ordinary day, and a chance to get some photos for the album, rather than an occasion for mourning. The media, of course, had other ideas.

[LeftishBrit]

6. I do respect her landmine campaign...

For the rest, she was IMO a well-meaning but not-very-brainy upper-class young woman, who was totally out of her depth in the royal family. She was a celebrity because of whom she married, not because of anything that she did. She was hounded by the press, who then exploited her death.

It WAS sad that she died so young, but many others have died young every day, without it resulting in all this media hoopla and conspiracy theories. I bet she'd have hated it, if she'd known. One of the main lessons as far as I'm concerned is to always wear your seatbelt (I admit that I sometimes don't!)