I did wonder for a longtime what to write in this post , and I guess I have no idea at all, so I’ll just ramble on for a while and see if anything springs to mind, an idea, a thought anything……….ah there’s one. “Diana, Princess of Wales”.
She’s in the top 10 Britains of all time, splutter, wtf, how does this happen. I admit to regularly struggling to deal with what the general public in this country seems to admire, support or even enjoy (Popstars and Gareth Gates et al anyone), the willing suspension of disbelief taken too far perhaps, but Diana! God help us all (from an ironic point of view of course, he certainly didn’t help her). She was forced into a marriage she didn’t want to be in, screwed a couple of well connected military men and sportsmen and kissed a few babies heads. Sure she had her uses, she did after all wonder through a minefield to highlight the dangers. She just trod in all the right places damnit (oops, a little too much vitriol there perhaps).
In all seriousness I am quite prepared to admit that Diana raised a lot of money for charity and highlighted some important causes, but, one of the ten greatest Britains to ever live I don’t think so. A self-obsessed neurotic with a failed marriage and severe psychological problems (“Be right back Charles I feel a trifle unwell – cut to bathroom as Di shoves her fingers down her throat again), how can a person like that be worthy of inclusion. Final note to self, remember that to become a royal in this country you must:
A) Be a fat stupid bitch who wrote crappy children’s books when the money ran out(hi Fergy)
B) Have an eating disorder and then get a Panorama interview (hi Di, I really thought about adding another hi to that but Ruth Madoc may never forgive me)
C) Run your mouth off and get caught by the tabloid press (hi Sophie)
D) Talk to plants a little too much and be outspoken on political issues when you’re supposed to keep stum (hi Charles)
E) Get born into the poor family (hi everyone else)
Funnily enough I actually support the monarchy, just not in its present rather ramshackled sad state.
Don’t expect to get an argument in favour of Diana being included in the top 100 (let alone the top ten), but in case you’re interested there’s been a discussion of the whole Greatest Britons subject in this IMHO thread. Where were you?
I think she is one of the top ten. She completely changed the way I think of Britons. For me, she shattered the stereotypes. It turns out that they were not unfeeling snobs after all.
Princess Diana is where you take your ideas of what English people are like from? I met her and she seemed quite nice, but I hope to god I’m nothing like the woman.
Perhaps you could base your opinions on a wider sample source? There are several million of us, after all.
For me, it’s an indictment of British joe-public stupidity and media manufactured memory. A day before she died, she was being excoriated in the tabloids for being an overprivileged manipulative bitch, and the public agreed.
On the Monday after she died, I went into my office in Connecticut, and my coworkers (bless 'em) were all treating me with kid gloves. Someone finally said “I’m really sorry about your loss”. I replied “What? Di? Well, to be honest, how would you feel if Ivana Trump had died? That’s how I feel today.”
OK, the analogy proved to be slightly flawed, as Di did a lot of good works for charity, but a “Great Briton”? Oh dear me no.
If it was top 10 UK media stars, or “all-purpose media icons”, I could understand it. But what did this bimbo do exactly? Give me Florence Nightingale or Grace Darling if you want valiant English rose types. Or Adam Smith or John Locke if you want Brits who contributed meaningful ideas to humanity.
Well, that was the stereotype that I was familiar with. I never knew any of them personally, but I had heard all about the stiff upper lip thing, the high holy queen’s English thing, the harumphing lords of this and that…
But then I saw Diana, a beautiful woman who was frail and fragile while at the same time being strong and noble. She cared about the poor and disenfranchised. She insisted that her sons show deference to their teachers rather than the other way around. She made me aware of things like land mines that I never even knew about.
And then I saw Britons respond by the millions with emotion spilling over onto the whole world. I saw them demand that their queen acknowledge their grief. I saw them express pride for what she represented, and reprehension for those who had used and manipulated her.
It changed my whole worldview of the whole Britain thing. I think it did the same for many other Americans as well. And I just think that an ambassador who singlehandedly could do so much to correct a false image deserves extremely high recognition.
Churchill might have made me think Britons are clever, but Diana made me think they are good.
Gosh, bet everyone’s surprised I’m popping up in this thread!
Just feel obliged to point out that several of the Royals (most notably Prince Charles and Princess Anne) outdid Di by a considerable margin in terms of charity work (both in man-hours invested and money contributed). When the divorce came round, and Di retired from patronizing (that is so definitely the right word) most of her charities, nobody in the charities sector was particularly worried… but the thought of the divorce settlement, with Di getting large slabs of Charles’ money, made fundraising directors weak in the knees, because this would reduce the money Charles had available to dish out, and they had no confidence Di would pass it on to charity instead of spending it on frocks.
(If I’m pressed, I can probably dredge up some figures to support this.)
Nobody could call Bigears or Horse-Features photogenic, and they don’t support photogenic causes (Charles’ focus is mainly on youth work and urban regeneration, meaning he deals with surly teenagers and sullen single mothers a lot), but they do do a lot of genuine work. As opposed to just posing.
You reached a sweeping opinion on 66 million people, based on stereotypes. You then revised that opinion because of media portrayal of public reaction to a celebs death.
Imaigine if I had said either
“She completely changed the way I think of Americans. For me, she shattered the stereotypes. It turns out that they were not unfeeling snobs after all”
or
“She completely changed the way I think of blacks. For me, she shattered the stereotypes. It turns out that they were not unfeeling snobs after all”
How would you describe such statements? Stupid? Racist? Please now apply such a reaction to your own comment.
So you’re lauding Diana because you opened yourself up to correcting your outdated prejudices? She didn’t do anything - you did. I think it’s a shame it took such an OTT example to do it.
This the stereotype of a nation weeping for a dead “Queen of Hearts”? That’s not true either. It was media-enforced. Most of us just went along our merry way and put up with the inconvenience of all the shops closing for a day. It was the tabloid newspapers who beat their breasts and cried for vengence, who practically enforced mourning on the rest of us.
Perhaps if you just thought of us as human beings instead of some fictional homogenous stiff-upper-lipped (or otherwise) nation, you wouldn’t need the death of the Princess of Wales to give you an idea of what English people are like.