The Princess Diana memorial thread

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9708/diana/

I've always admired and appreciated her.

Rest in peace, Di.

She was beautiful. I suppose you don't know what you had til
its gone.

RV, republican at heart, admirer of beauty and grace too.

death...heard that announced today.

Yeah.....Elvis and Di........somehow died ahead of their times. Some folks might disagree about Elvis..but Di was a treasure. I feel the same about Princess Grace and Jackie O........

We lost alot of "class" when they departed! (even Elvis had a certain amount of class....one has to look..hard...but thos old Southern Boys......did have some class.....). I'm not talking about Lott and "bug man." I mean the "other side."

Nice post.......Cat....

Britanny Spears just doesn't do it for me.....of J-Lo or Mariah.....mush as they are "cute." sigh.........

for this thread.

She was a breath of fresh air...gone too soon.

When a lot of really decent people start checking out early, you have to wonder. She was a treasure.

I recommend it if you like to read about royalty and their doings. I didn't realize there were so many surviving royal houses in Europe.

There was a very sensitive article about Diana's sons.

the prevailing gossip is that Harry is not Charles' son, but James Hewitt's.

If this is true, I forgive her.

time involved...Apparently she hadn't met Hewitt till after Harry's birth....If the rumours started because of the red hair both Harry & Hewitt have, well red hair is on Diana's side of the family. Her brother has red hair and I always thought Harry looked a lot like him....

but he looks more like Dianas father, so who knows. I hope the women felt loved by some man whoever it was before she died, because the twit she married obviously wasn't capable of it.

the wrong person?....Their marriage was a mistake from the beginning but they both wanted it at the time....It didn't work out....period....From watching them through the years, I believe they are both decent people who loved their children and BOTH did works of charity....I see no need to take sides....:shrug:

He is a total dork - selfish, arrogant and typical of our wonderful royals who, with the connivance of his family, manipulated and used a fairly innocent teenager in order to get kids. She was supposed to be dumb and compliant while he went out and did whatever he wanted - unfortunately she turned out to have a brain and an agenda of her own. I was never a big fan of her but had to applaud the way she screwed up these people and their greedy little plans. Did someone have her 'removed'? Seems perfectly possible to me. You have to live here in the UK to appreciate how unacceptable, stupid, ignorant, arrogant and useless these people are.

windsor all the time. sorry.

they mention it.... he sure doesn't resembled charles in ANY way....

Hmmmmm......

I was fighting with my now ex-boyfriend and instead of going camping with him I ran off to my grandfather's house to get away from it all (grandfather lived in rural northcentral PA). My grandfather always woke me up early in the morning and his wake up call was "That princess who's in the news all the time was killed in a car crash"

I had no clue it was Diana til I got down stairs and watched the news. Boy did that one make me cry. I think she became so much better of a person once she divorced Charles and became her own person. Her work with banning landmines (something the US does not believe in) made me really respect who she was.

for older women, and what a lot of good she would have done had she lived. I wonder what they'll find out. That it was an accident, I hope. Anything more sinister would be just too much.

but what's your reason to admire that come-to-live soap opera? It's so...kitschy.
Coldhearted german,
Dirk

But when she died it hit me like a ton of bricks. I cried and cried, grieved and grieved. I was so struck also by how the whole world grieved her. And I thought a lot about her, and what she had meant in the world.

One of the things I saw was an extended clip of an interview (David Frost??). I wish I remembered her exact words, but as she was going through one of her growth periods (crises), she wondered to herself what she could give to the world. She said she realized "she could give love" wherever she went.

And that's exactly what she did, from being one of the first royals ever to actually shake hands with commoners, to touching AIDS patients, thus humanizing them and helping erase the fear of physical contact with them. And landmines. And children.

It also finally occurred to me that in her life story, she was a modern day goddess figure. Here, in Diana, we all had the whole saga, a new mythology for contemporary womanhood.

Start with a fairy tale wedding to Prince Charming (well, a Prince, anyway), just like we're all raised to somehow expect. That, of course, is not at all what the reality was, and after a lot of pain and suffering, trying and trying to make it work, she realizes she's in a loveless marriage after all. But she has 2 sons for whom she is, according to all accounts, a loving and gifted mother.

But there's at least one more betrayal at the hands of her lover, a very public and humiliating betrayal. (It does take most of us women too long to "get it" about men and betrayal, so that we stop picking the wrong ones.)

Her bouts with eating disorders -- anorexia and bulemia -- wherein she courageously did what she needed to do (therapy) to wrestle with and defeat those demons, and come out stronger for it.

Having gone through this metamorphosis, she begins to take her life back and create something really quite wonderful and remarkable. "Giving love," wherever one finds oneself is quite a Life Purpose. By all accounts, she fulfilled it generously.

She finds enormous self-ulfillment from her charitable and other activities, from her relationship with her sons, and finally with a third partner. She seemed at least happy in that relationship. (I'm not all that familiar with the details, but can't say I was entirely comfortable with him, so I don't know if this relationship was truly good for her or not. I also don't know about the details of her death, which has been widely speculated about.)

But at this point in her life, she was a role model for many, many people around the world. She was beautiful, accomplished, loved, loving.

And then she died -- tragically and far too young. And the world showed in their grief how much good she had done, how much love she had spread, how thoroughly she was part of us even if, like me, we may not have fully realized it while she lived.

So there we have it: a modern day woman's hero's journey, a modern day goddess figure. It's very hard for me to imagine any woman in the Western World who does not see something of her life in Diana's.

BTW, some Native American prophecy said that we would be close to the time of the Great Purification when three world-famous women died. They were: Princess Diana, Mother Theresa, Jacqueline Onassis.

Eloriel

i thought of it this way...

Martha is a recently divorced mother, her marriage to an older guy ended and she had a lot of problems coping with her marital problems and had resorted to bulemia and at times the bottle to medicate her problems.
Martha has two kids... she doesn't live in the nicest place in town so she sent the boys to live with her mother so they could go to good school...She loves her boys and she is generally a good mother with the right intentions...volunteers at PTA meetings, speaks out about issues that concern her, works two jobs to help her mother out with expenses of her boys...etc
Martha finds what she thinks is Mr. Right... after a night of fun and a bit of drinking she and he get into a car driven by a friend of theirs who is completely trashed. They die in an accident.

Because Martha isn't a princess, because she isn't rich... people aren't so kind about her death... they paint her as irresponsible and reckless...

I have seen situations like this and I have seen the nasty vitriol that pours forth... so when Diana died and I saw the love that poured forth I realized how really confusing life can be...and the difference that money makes.

By the way I am not being judgemental..hell I remember getting up to watch her get married when I was a kid... I remember making a barbie wedding dress to mimic her dress...

Its just that I wish everyone in their hour of need were to receive sympathy and love... no matter what.

...I admired her very much...

Because at least one post in this thread needs to tell the truth about unfounded admiration for parasitic royalty...

The details in these lyrics are true, including the part about the eight bottles of wine. Folks, that ain't bright.

Drunk Divorced Floozie
(The Ballad of Diana Spencer)

She was a drunk divorced floozie
Goin' a hundred and twenty miles per hour
With her Arab playboy-toy
Down by the Eiffel Tower
The driver just drank eight bottles of wine
Ain't seen her kids in a long long time

She's just a jet set party girl
Goin' to meet her maker
That nobility crap
Don't stop the undertaker
Car catapulted into a concrete cave
She fell in with a bad crowd
Now she's in her grave

It was a pitiful public display
Of unwarranted grief
A sure sign that
Our emptiness is complete
No matter what you say
It wasn't no tragedy
And son you can't blame
The paparazzi

She won the female lottery
And she lived the fairy tale
Married big ears
She birthed him two heirs
To the throne
But she couldn't keep the
Royal member happy at home

She was a drunk divirced floozie
Gallivanting in France
She died in the backseat
Unzipping Dodi's pants
A buncha non-working rich pigs
So camera shy
They got drunk, drove fast and proceeded to die.

--- Mojo Nixon

For those who don't already know he's been posting using two accounts lately, though I don't know why :eyes:

http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/dianadied.html

Quicktime video, 153 M

10 M mp3 for dialup DUers

I posted a LONG time ago why I created a new account, so you are about 2 months late for the train buddy. Everyone knows who I am. There was no dramatic reason behind the name change, I just did it for me.

I retired the Zomby name, but LynneSin and a few others missed my ZW name and asked me to post again under it, so I do.

Makes me glad when it pisses some people off though.

As for the documentary, that is more hagiographic hackwork, disguised as journalism with its somber tones and self-seriousness.

As someone adamantly against drunk driving, one glass would have been too much for me, so the eight bottles truth or fiction matters not - Diana was STUPID to get behind the wheel with her boy toy.

For all the people gushing about her motherhood, it was a long long time between visits to the royal offspring when she was partying hard with Dodi.

I am really indifferent to Diana, it is just the Diana worship that grates. People need to look to THEMSELVES for inspiration and uplift, not some inbred parasite and absent mother who just happened to have a cute smile.

She wasn't the one driving :eyes:

Maybe you think your hijacking this thread was cute, but I think it was just rude, especially considering you don't have your facts about the incident even close to correct.

Why is it noble when a person born to wealth and privilege stoops to "care for the chiiillldren?" Heck she didn't have to go to WORK everyday so she had a bunch of time to care for the chiiilllldren.

Please she lived fast and died young. When similar things happen to less well situated people they are demonized as horrible mothers and said to set a bad example for the chiiiiilllllldren.

So, she touched people with AIDS? There are people who do that EVERY DAY and they didn't need a fancy schmancy "princess" to tell them it was OK. these people are called friends and family. I know this because my uncle had AIDS and I hugged him LONG before Priness Diana showed the world it was fine to be affectionate toward someone with AIDS.

The double standard was made manifest when Mother Theresa died a week after Diana (of old age and not as a result of some drunken night out). The media was not all over that one like they were all over Diana. And whatever you think of Mother Theresa at least she was down among some REALLY poor people on a very regular basis. I didn't hear any Elton John songs about her.

and I have every right to admire and respect her.

Why don't you start a Trash Diana thread instead of infecting mine?

You said this was a MEMORIAL thread, and some of us remember her without romanticizing or gauzy eyes. Besides, I had to hijack this.

If someone else had posted a "Let's glorify Diana" thread, I probably would have stayed out. But the Matsignal beckoned, and so did an alternative point of view. :evilgrin:

RIP Diana, we miss you! :loveya:

I thought when she died people might stop carrying on about her, but alas, no.

The British media do have a tendency to go overboard with Diana, even now she has popped her clogs that really is ridiculous.

The nearest thing we have now is Posh n' Becks and that is bad enough. Can we have some respite from that crap now Beckham has gone to Real Madrid?

I remember coming down the stairs on that moring to walk the dog and take a wee trip to the newsagents and thinking to myself I hope that the papers aren't still full of Diana & Dodi crap only to be told that they had snuffed it in a car crash. of course after that you could not escape the Diana stuff bloody everywhere.

No tapes with me, and had to spend the entire journey with the radio playing classical music, interspersed occasionally by a newsreader coming on to say, "She's still dead......more news in an hour".

Very dull. Did the entire TV and radio network need to go off air at that time???

P.

As a Princess, she could have chosen any sort of life to live or to involve herself with any sort of charities. She chose the "unglamorous" ones.

Her work with AIDS patients -- at that time -- was revolutionary. Yes, it WAS a big deal that she sat with AIDS patients, held their hand and kissed them. She did that at a time when a good deal of the world erroneously thought that any type of contact with an AIDS patient could bring infection or was dangerous in some way. The world got to see pictures that showed there was nothing to be afraid of when coming in contact with a person infected with HIV. I was there in the AIDS battle at the time, had lost friends and others infected, and saw first hand the fear many had about victims. Those pictures helped change how the world viewed HIV/AIDS patients and, for that, I am eternally grateful to Diana.

I lived in Indiana around the time Ryan White contracted AIDS.

The way that little boy was shunned and mistreated made me ashamed for man kind.

People actually took their children out of school because of Ryan.

She was there when folks were trying to keep HIV infected kids out of school, before Magic Johnson went public, and when average people were afraid to shake the hands of an HIV/AIDS patient.

I remember those first pictures so clearly in my mind -- her sitting in a hospital ward with an AIDS patient and holding his hand, the flashbulbs going off wildly. Those pictures helped in a way that all the education on HIV/AIDS had not succeeded.

I'm not happy she's dead. Let's get that out of the way first. Do I think that she had some "issues" and probably had to put up with a shedload of pressure as part of the Royal Family? Yep, fair enough.

However, I feel that I should point out that it was, pretty much, HER JOB to go around supporting charities and worthy initiatives. My tax money went towards supporting her and the rest of her family, and if she hadn't have done some pretty excellent charity work then questions would have been asked.

Many other members of the Royal Family do charity work that far outweighs what Diana was doing, but they don't get anywhere near the publicity because a) they're not as photogenic and b) they don't seek it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that she was a terrible person, but I do genuinely believe that she was at least as flawed as the rest of us, manipulated the media, and the whole "Diana Worship" thing that happened when she died is bizarre and misplaced, IMHO.

I'm not intending to hijack this thread and I hope that I'm not causing offense. I certainly wouldn't suggest that Diana didn't do a great deal of good work in her life...It's just that her sad and premature death does not, IMHO, entail the amount of unconditional praise heaped upon her by some people.

I'm not including you, Cat Woman, in that criticism, as I'd be a complete tosser to suggest that you shouldn't remember the good things in her life, but I'm afraid that this is one of my pet-hates about being British.......

RIP Diana.

:eyes:

Yeah I know she did a lot of good and that is fine but the night it happened all I could think was "Oh here we go". Of course a living saint died just over a week later but never mind that this was a CELEBRITY!!!!!!!!