The Diana Conspiracy

Every now and again I see yet another news story about how the death of Diana (neé Spencer, subsequently Princess of Wales, subsequently divorced) was orchestrated by the British royal family, some branch of the British secret services or some connected body. This drivel really annoys me. Not just because it's a heaving pile of steaming nonsense so much as because the toss-pots who're flogging this dead horse are among those actually guilty of causing her death.

Personally I detest the whole culture of celebrity. I've nothing against the people who end up being celebrities, except in so far as they go out of their way to seek that attention. It's the popular media's attention to them that provokes my ire; that, and the public's willingness to uncritically purchase their reporting of this utter drivel. That's what killed Diana. It's also what made it impossible for Charles to find a bride acceptable to the public at large. Every lass he ever courted – prior to Diana – had her prior private life dragged through the sewers and every possible prudish opportunity for objection to her turned into an inescapable obstacle. If Diana had any prior darlings, they had the decency to keep their mouths shut about that past; which let her be eligible to marry Charles but, at the same time, ensured the inevitability of the virginal purity myths that got attached to her and, inevitably, led to the huge commercial value of any picture bearing on the veracity of that myth.

Mr. Murdoch and his peers know perfectly well that any tawdry drivel, no matter how irrelevant, can be peddled as news as long as: it involves people that the public has heard of; and might plausibly be construed as involving sex. Mr. Murdoch and his peers also know that folk buy more newspapers that include pictures of women (even if very nicely dressed, but especially when dressed revealingly), at least if they've heard of the women in question. Mr. Murdoch and his peers are great champions of leaving markets to regulate themselves without government interference, based on the rationale that market forces shall crush that of which the public disapproves and promote that which suits the public. They have, consequently, no right to feign ignorance of the link between market forces and how folk respond to them. Yet Mr. Murdoch and his peers control the very media which – unless they are fraudulently representing the service they represent to their advertisers – alter the way that the public responds to market forces.

The mass media (e.g. Mr. Murdoch) were unequivocally willing to pay the paparazzi for any and all pictures that intruded – even if improperly – into Diana's private life. They were so because the public at large was more inclined to purchase journals that reported on such tawdry drivel than papers which actually published news. Gossip is more interesting than reality. Consequently, wherever Diana and her friends went, there were paparazzi loitering with intent to catch pictures. Unsurprisingly, such intrusions into her life became such an obnoxious burden that she – and those around her – took increasingly desperate measures to avoid this unwanted attention. It is no surprise that she eventually left a relatively safe haven under such circumstances of haste (in the hopeless attempt to avoid the inevitable paparazzi) that the driver drove recklessly (in a desperate attempt to escape the pack of hounds on his heels) and thereby came to such misadventure as to kill everyone in his vehicle. Consequently, the following are unequivocally facts:

• The paparazzi hounded Diana to her death;
• The mass media created an economic climate in which the commercial interests of the paparazzi implied that hounding Diana – even unto death – was the economically optimal course to follow;
• The general public – by purchasing the newspapers and viewing the advertising-supported television stations which created that economic climate – is ultimately responsible for creating that economic climate.

I would also add that everything I've seen appears to support the view that the British royal family desperately wanted to make Diana a non-story and was bitterly upset that the whole saga ended in tragedy. After all, her sons are members of that family and, indeed, heirs to the throne.

So, if you're still buying the newspapers, or watching the news channels, that report conspiracy theories about how the royal family or MI5 or whoever – aside from those very media corporations themselves – conspired to have Diana killed: YOU are aiding and abetting the international conspiracy of media magnates who (perhaps unwittingly, but they most emphatically should have known what they were doing) caused Diana's death. Please stop doing this, before anyone else suffers at YOUR hands.

Written by Eddy.