Except for what she has done philanthropically — all of which has been thoroughly documented (and cited here) — which rises to equal or surpass what anyone could reasonably expect. We were only countering the people who painted her as a do-nothing entitlement-minded spoiled brat whose only charity work was what she could do without lifting a finger. That’s an outrageous characterization and ignorant as hell.
Dumbledore is dead?!!
My god the whole world is now a dark and meaningless void
No, you were criticizing Chowder’s observation that the people who were out grieving for this women they never knew were fucking idiots.
As for the idea that Diana can be judged by her charity work? Diana, Princess of our Hearts Ltd was the media front of a publicity machine. You think that the way she turned up for say, 10 hours worth of charity appointments a week, while a secretary wrote out letters for her as patron of various organisations, somehow lets you judge her, good or bad? Bollocks. Either she had good grasp of PR, or she hired someone who did. What she was like as a person I’ll leave to those who knew her, I neither know nor care. What we got to see as public was some well orchestrated spin and advertising. Whether the person behid was good, bad or in between we cannot tell.
No, I was criticizing his worthless thread-shitting. Who the fuck is he to decide how people should grieve and what they should grieve about? And what does it have to do with Diana herself? As far as I’m concerned, an idiot is someone who can’t keep up with what a discussion is about.
Her work speaks for itself. The cites have been given. Your personal ridicule of her does not refute them. Once again…
“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.
Yes, her work speaks for itself. You can judge her charity work on its own. What it doesn’t say is necessarily anything about her. If a person performs charity work out of bad motives, then the work is still good, while they may not be.
Now we can argue about her motivations for doing things, but in the abstract at least, to claim that because a person does good things they are a good person while ignoring their motivations is somewhat mistaken, in my opinion.
I completely agree with that, which is why I rely for my information on people she dealt with directly. If you saw the concert her sons produced in her honor, you saw quite many ordinary people testify about how good she was to them directly. If you read the links provided in this thread, you saw how good the people who worked with her on charities thought she was. The only people I hear knocking her are people who have never met her and begrudge the grief of others. Why should the default position be that she’s a skank?
Yes, that is wrong. Or rather that, as the amount they pay in taxes is confidential (just like any other taxpayers), it is impossible to say. Actually, it’s rather unlikely that the Queen’s private fortune is anywhere close to being big enough for that to be true.
The argument is instead that their cost is more than paid for by the revenues from the Crown Estates. Except that that rather depends on the debatable assumption that the Crown Estates were, in some real sense, the Queen’s property in the first place.
There are plenty of good reasons to justify the cost of the monarchy, but, IMHO, that isn’t one of them.
How exactly do you know what her motivations were, and that they weren’t laudable? Barring evidence to the contrary, why not give her credit for helping people and let it go? The overwhelming need to take away all her positives seems a bit perverse to me. I understand resenting all her media hoopla, but then criticize the media, criticize the people who have fetishized her memory, but leave the motivations of the dead woman out of it, unless you have a cite that they were impure and thus, we should discount the good work she did.
From what I remember reading, and I should make clear that it was a long time ago, and I never had a great deal of interest in her as an individual, she is reported to have spent much of her time trying to make her husband and members of his family look bad, and setting herself up as a popularity base outside of the Royal Family. Not the best of motivations, I think.
But bottom line, one royal making another royal look bad doesn’t amount to a big hill of beans. She starts off with a pretty major strike against her in my book, by voluntarily being part of a despicable and archane system. She has a long way to climb from that to get back to the level of being a skank, let alone reach anything higher.
Last weekend, the bar next door to the one I often frequent was even more busy than normal - the reason being Nicole Richie was there to see her boyfriend’s band play. I totally fail to understand why people stood in line for hours to enter a bar simply because some other person would be in there, despite the fact they would never speak to that person once inside. Similarly, I totally fail to understand why people would act as if their entire life was coming to an end because some total stranger popped her clogs. It wasn’t because people thought her charity work would not continue. In fact, isn’t it true that her death helped the fundraising and raised the profile of her charities, however misguided some of her causes might or might not be?
I don’t discunt the good work she did. I don’t think it makes up for being in the Royal Family. And there was evidence regarding her motivations, but in the end, I don’t care a vast amount why she did stuff.
Which says precisely fuck all about her as a person. Are you sure you read the OP, or follow what it’s about? You know - was Greer out of line to call Diana a Devious Moron, as apparently “an idiot is someone who can’t keep up with what a discussion is about”
Oh, another sign of idiocy would be some sort of claim that her charity work shows she must be a nice person, without any consideration of motive. Charitable causes can definitely be used for self promotion and other nastiness
http://www.gdf.org.ly/
http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/blog/2007/06/charity_commission_rules_on_ga.html
Poison well. Just because charitable causes can be used for self promotion does not imply that any particular person has used charitable causes for self promotion. Besides, I’ve already given the reasons I don’t think she did that. She could have gotten self promotion simply by walking outside, where hoards of photographers were always waiting. Instead, she included them in her activities only when it benefitted the charities she served. And they have said they are grateful for it.
That’s just… bizarre. You’re prepared to assign to her the worst of motivations without any reason, but hold up a tell-all scandal book as evidence that she is a skank. How do you know that author of what you wrote didn’t just publish for the money? Paul Burell wrote a book also. He worked directly with and for her for many years. His book is full of nothing but praise for her, both as a public figure and a personal friend. Maybe you just read the wrong books. 
I haven’t assigned any motivations. I am saying it is possible that those were her motivations, and it is possible they weren’t. As I hoped was clear, I think choice to marry into royalty and becoem part of that systems places one at an incredibly low starting point from which to try to ascend.
And as I said, I don’t know why that’s the case and you really haven’t explained it. Is it always wrong to marry above one’s station? Isn’t it possible that she married Charles because she loved him? All I’m trying to get from you is why your default position is that royalty = bad, commoner = good.
I don’t think she married “above her station.” I think she was a part of the aristocracy and married another part of the aristocracy. My bottom line is not that “commoners” are good. It is that the institution of the monarchy is a corrupt one, based on theft from the people, insidious in that it installs a sense of merit and deference through birth status, and damaging to the democratic process.
And out of interest, where did you say that? I seem to have missed it or I would have tried to answer.
As an aside, I’ve never been comfortable with the whole concept of “charity,” as a method of addressing the gap between what we as a species should be doing and what those of us with the power might deign to do. When I see photos in the society pages of both the established wealthy and the climbers in formal wear, I don’t deny they still give even more to charity in their dens while wearing their bathrobes, but I’m still disturbed by how so many issues would be ignored if the powerful didn’t want to get all dressed up and be in the same room as Susan Sarandon or Julia Roberts, etc. (is that Paris Hilton’s true offense - that as someone both pretty and rich she’s not doing her part in upholding the illusion of their inherent virtue?)
Would the better distribution of wealth and opportunity negate the need for this system? Aren’t there enough well-intientioned, attractive people like Diana in this world that it makes as much sense for the paparazzi to focus on any one of them as it would for them to target people who, say, wear eyeglases?
I suppose I’m asking humans to not be human. But things do change. Slowly.
If Lucky Luciano’s great-grandson went around calling himself a Mafia Don, he should expect that people will look on his actions in the most ungenerous way possible, too. Even if the Lucianos’ racketeering days (like the Windsors’ and the Spencers’) are long past.
Did you really just compare Tyra Banks to Princess Di? Tyra Banks who has a show dedicated to telling people who are obviously not qualified to be models just why they are not qualified to be models. Who does everything to get her name in the media every chance she gets, trying to be Oprah one minute and Mary J. Blige the next. Everything Tyra ever does is self-aggrandizing. That’s the opposite of Princess Di, who was in the limelight because of her role in society, and who used that limelight to help good causes.
If you cannot see the difference then you’ve got some serious issues to work out my friend.
I think that the only people who are stupid here are those that think Diana was unaware of this role. If you think so then you’re quite ignorant of the history of aristocracy and the role of women within it.