I wouldn’t excuse anythign. Some criminals dodge the gallows. Still, if you’re born to rule, there is a wall somewhere (or a disemboweled priest) with your name on it.
I think this brought it on –
But she was a part of it. By her own choice. I don’t buy into this naive 19 year old marrying for love. I have no proof for it, obviously, but I think I knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted the pretty sparkly things, and she got them.
Does that mean that George VI was…God?
That’s how she was reared. England has been a Fabianist society for a long time now. When Struan offered her as the libertarian queen, my first thought was, “What does she know about libertarian theory?” She’s too used to government by nannies. That’s all.
If so, then your point was not expressed very well when you said:
I don’t count the few cases “cited” in this thread as a “ton”, or even a lot. One could ask just how many people could have been counted as “royals” of all the countries of Europe at that time? What fraction of them did anything like you say above? From the scant research I’ve done, not a very large percentage.
Diana was not a heroine nor a villain. I think she was a fairly average person who was put into a seriously un-average position. She did some good things, and through some means or another reached out to “the people” a fuck lot more than the icy cold Elizabeth or her insane family ever did. And what significant purpose does the Royal Family really serve in this day and age, outside of the Queen’s Head of State role, other than being a positive Personality? If people don’t like the royal family and nobility and such then they should get off a message board and get into the streets and force a vote for a “constitutional” change, rather than dumping on Diana alone.
You want a hereditary head of state, but only one that is “schooled” in a particular political philosophy? Hm …
I think I know in Liberal’s fantasies which family would be declared the royal family of a libertarian state by voluntary popular acclamation …
She took advantage of a system. Lots of people do. I’m not sure I wouldn’t. It’s not a great thing, but it’s hardly worth Greer’s over the top invective. And she did seem to grow after her horrible marriage.
Again, I don’t think Diana is the greatest person ever, I just think she’s not that bad. Compared to Britney or Paris, she’s a saint.
Dumping on Diana alone? It’s a thread about her. If you want to start a thread about any of the other worthless vermin, I’ll dump on them too. The institution is despicable. I’d abolish it tomorrow, and take back all the little perks they have stolen over the centuries. Diana wasn’t the worst of them, nor was she the best.
I’ll stop channelling my inner-Nye Bevan now.
No one want to take on my questions in Post No. 84?
I can’t answer your questions in #84.
Re Diana and her charity work. She is on par with those members of the nobility, who would NOT have been seen touching a leper, for instance. Times have changed, as have opportunities for royal charity work–Diana did well for her era.
Princess Anne is an incredibly hard worker, but (and it’s not fair, but must be said) she lacks the glamor and beauty that made Diana so popular. If they were just friends and went to a dance club, you just know Anne would be the one watching the coats and purses, while Diana danced… 
Charity work is indeed expected of people in their position. But Diana did that and did unpopular charity work–like the land mines and AIDS and leprosy. I think she also used her media storm to draw attention to these issues, for the greater good. I don’t say she was the best of all royals ever to do so–but I think she deserves more credit than she gets for what she did.
Originally Posted by mhendo
And they usually do it without expecting publicity or public adoration or hero worship.
Because she was a relentless self-publicist?
Princess Anne is actively involved in around 200 charities, but how many people know that?
Ah, Voltaire - at least there’s still some appreciation for the classics.
Diana was like a pedigree dog - so finely-bred, so lacking in brains. But I agree, “devious moron” is an oxy…thingummy. Still, I miss her not at all.
Diana, like most human beings was complex.
Her charity work was admirable - she could have easily picked less controversial or more pleasant causes (Architecture, anyone?). She worked on some unpopular ones, loaning them her popularity. Does it make her humaniarian of the century, nah, but it isn’t a contest - she still did good - more good than I’m likely to do in my life.
Her indiscretion in her marriage was tacky. But certainly she was not the only person who didn’t manage to keep their mouth shut about their private unhappiness in that relationship.
Her hurt over the situation with her marriage struck me as naive. Which isn’t really a fault - its a reflection of someone who was young and probably quite star struck when she married. After all, even if you are “Lady Diana” getting to be a Princess is quite the dream come true for most girls. Its possible that it wasn’t naive and she was purposely playing the role to gain pity. But I don’t believe that - I suspect that is where Greer may be coming from (i.e. no one can be this stupid, so she must have been manipulating people.)
Her “lowbrow” tastes - she liked what she liked. I’m not going to fault someone for enjoying dancing to bad 80s music? Gee, I’ve never done that (ok, not within the past twelve hours). How many 19 year old’s really do enjoy “high arts?”
Her beauty? Eh - never really saw it. Kind of English looking. Not unattractive by any means, but a nice looking woman who had her own personal staff to make sure she never left the house with a bad hair day. Her or her stylists generally had great taste. However, I think the fact that she wasn’t an extraordinarily beautiful woman made her more likeable.
On the contrary, she scrupulously avoided publicity except when she was pitching for charity. You do understand, don’t you, that having their plight reported all over the world actually helped the charity in question. Not to disparage Margaret’s work, but it seems to me that one ten-second clip worldwide broadcast of Diana holding and patting the hand of a man with AIDS did more for HIV sufferers in terms of acceptance than everything done before, including Magic Johnson announcing he had HIV. (Magic who? Magic Johnson. He was a famous basketball player-god-idol.) That’s why the picture of her walking through a land mine was crisp and clear, whereas the picture of her in a bikini on a yacht was grainy and taken with a telescopic lens.
And to set the record straight, she was on a whole level of her own with respect to charity work:
“Diana used her power just like a magic wand, waving it in all kinds of places where there was hurt,” says Debbie Tate, cofounder of Grandma’s House, a group of Washington homes for abused, abandoned and HIV-positive children, which was $100,000 richer after Diana hosted a 1990 fund-raiser. “And everywhere she used it, there were changes – almost like a fairy tale.”
Indeed, while Britain’s royal family has always embraced philanthropy – Prince Charles is patron of 161 charities, the Queen, of 221 – Diana, in the course of her 16 years as princess, transformed a family obligation into a phenomenally successful personal calling. “Her overall effect on charity is probably more significant than any other person’s in the 20th century,” says Stephen Lee, director of Britain’s Institute of Charity Fundraising Managers. The numbers bear him out: the sale last June of Diana’s dresses was the most profitable charity auction in the history of Christies’ New York, raising some $3.25 million for cancer and AIDS charities (“Sequins save lives” was the phrase Diana used in planning the event). In 1997 she joined the British Red Cross’s new campaign against land mines, and the group took in $1.6 million. Even in death she hasn’t lost her golden touch: the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund’s coffers (the contents of which will be distributed to still-to-be-selected charities beginning in March) are currently brimming at $56 million.http://www.time.com/time/daily/special/diana/readingroom/sept9798/9.html
(Emphasis mine.)
It’s oxymoron. It’s a chemical that floods the brains of certain fetuses during pregnancy, usually as a result of inbreeding.
I happened to be in London the day of Dianas funeral. I stood in a park with a sodding great TV screen relaying the whole business surrounded by men and women crying their eyes out, weeping, wailing and gnashing their teeth.
Flowers, cuddly toys, candles and all manner of shit strewn around.
I thought then as I do now, what on earth was the matter with those people, it wasn’t as if their great aunt had shuffled off and left all her millions to the cats home instead of to them.
Fucking idiots
Yeah. Nothing in the world could be more important than some pocket change from a dead aunt.
Nicholas was indeed no Stalin but then who was? Saying that someone wasn’t as bad as Stalin is hardly high praise.
The Romanovs were genocidal anti-Semitic pieces of shit whose excesses caused the rise of Lenin and then Stalin. It was the Romanovs who believed that they ruled by divine right. It was the Romanovs who were responsible for publishing the libelous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They starved the people of Ukraine. (Including my grand-parents, their parents, their aunts, uncles and cousins.)
Being shot to death in a field was better than Nicholas deserved.
How your great aunt thought about you should be a fucking long way more important to you than the death of a media image - and that’s all she was to everyone outside her family.
Fuck it, it’d be like the nation mourning the tragic death of Dumbledore. Diana, Princess of our Hearts ™ was just a media creation. The actual person, we’ve no idea who she was, what she thought, what she was like, anything like that. My sympathy to her family for her untimely death, but other than that it’s just the unfortunate demise of someone they didn’t know. Obviously you feel sympathy and a degree of sorrow, but going beyond that is just pure projection.