Diana Paper
hirteen years on, the hysteria following Princess Diana's death still gives me the creeps
By Ed West Society Last updated: August 31st, 2010
70 Comments Comment on this article
[pic]It’s 13 years since the start of the weirdest episode in recent British history: the mass hysteria that followed the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on August 31, 1997.
The Princess’s death was a tragedy, as were those of her lover and driver, but it was a tragedy for her sons and other loved ones. For the assembled mass of mawkish weirdoes who cried empty tears for this stranger, her death was nothing more than an excuse for an orgy of sentimentality.
Sentimentality is the subject of Theodore Dalrymple’s newly-published Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality, which looks at how this poisonous emotion has taken hold of society.
Sentimentality, in which crude emotion replaces dispassionate analysis, affects all aspects of public life, such as the debates over education, prison places and overseas aid. As Dalrymple points out, no country has ever escaped poverty via international aid – but never mind, since what matters is not actually doing anything about state education or crime or Africa, but being seen to be caring about the “vulnerable”.
Princess Diana was perhaps the queen of sentimentality in life, in her public support for the most fashionable of causes and her own public dramas, and in death she led an emotional revolution, when the Queen was bullied into showing she was grief-stricken by the tabloid press and the mob of simpletons that surrounded the palace. For in a world ruled by sentimentality, public outpourings of grief have long replaced dignity and self-restraint, so that the mob distrusts people who don't blub.
As Dalrymple writes:
“Where is our flag?” asked a newspaper headline, and “Show us you care” shouted the crowd outside Buckingham Palace (perhaps by laying a teddy bear on one of the piles of stuffed toys that had already accumulated in
By Ed West Society Last updated: August 31st, 2010
70 Comments Comment on this article
[pic]It’s 13 years since the start of the weirdest episode in recent British history: the mass hysteria that followed the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on August 31, 1997.
The Princess’s death was a tragedy, as were those of her lover and driver, but it was a tragedy for her sons and other loved ones. For the assembled mass of mawkish weirdoes who cried empty tears for this stranger, her death was nothing more than an excuse for an orgy of sentimentality.
Sentimentality is the subject of Theodore Dalrymple’s newly-published Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality, which looks at how this poisonous emotion has taken hold of society.
Sentimentality, in which crude emotion replaces dispassionate analysis, affects all aspects of public life, such as the debates over education, prison places and overseas aid. As Dalrymple points out, no country has ever escaped poverty via international aid – but never mind, since what matters is not actually doing anything about state education or crime or Africa, but being seen to be caring about the “vulnerable”.
Princess Diana was perhaps the queen of sentimentality in life, in her public support for the most fashionable of causes and her own public dramas, and in death she led an emotional revolution, when the Queen was bullied into showing she was grief-stricken by the tabloid press and the mob of simpletons that surrounded the palace. For in a world ruled by sentimentality, public outpourings of grief have long replaced dignity and self-restraint, so that the mob distrusts people who don't blub.
As Dalrymple writes:
“Where is our flag?” asked a newspaper headline, and “Show us you care” shouted the crowd outside Buckingham Palace (perhaps by laying a teddy bear on one of the piles of stuffed toys that had already accumulated in