Hey, Diana's Dead So Get a Life

Thanks to swift timing and mawkish execution, ‘Candle In The Wind 1997’ bagged Elton a knighthood, sold 30 million copies, and became The Biggest Selling Single of All Time™. Heard it? Sure you have. Rather than sing ‘Goodbye Norma Jean’, his tribute to Marilyn Monroe, Elton switched the lyric to ‘Goodbye, England’s Rose’.

Elton’s such a shameless opportunist, if Celine Dion takes a bullet in the chest, he’ll hop the fence, crash her funeral, grab the microphone, and croon ‘Goodbye, skinny frog’. And if Pamela Anderson kicks the bucket, brace yourself because you’re going to hear ‘Goodbye, silicone’ for the rest of your sorry life.

To the 30-million-plus Kleenex-honking Cult of Diana fanatics who are still grieving, hear this: take a tip from Elton, wave ‘ta-ta’, then grab a life, you saps. Preferably before next year’s anniversary. Diana’s been dead a year yet you’re still letting swine sell you commemorative stamps, spoons, calendars, candles, lottery tickets, margarine, T-shirts, porcelain dolls, and souvenir plates for your TV dinners. In the U.K., people tried to patent Diana seatbelts, Diana fire extinguishers, and a Diana colonic irrigation kit.

And how do they snow you? By piggybacking on media who are still reporting on how the media is reporting on how the paparazzi stalked Diana’s days so you could see snapshots of Diana doing aerobics.

As for Her Legacy™, I suspected the Province would be Vancouver’s worst local offender, glossing over Diana’s faults and deifying her photo ops into a Teflon legend of selfless perfection.

However, the worst local example of Diana overkill was the Vancouver Sun’s Saturday Review section which copied, word-for-word, an on-line conspiracy theory which claims Diana faked her own death. Which makes it official then: our major daily newspaper is now being composed by teenaged greasy-nosed Internet feebs.

Worse, the Sun asked its readers “What did Diana mean to you?”, then published 27 useless twitters from earnest half-wits lusting to prove precisely how much they Care™. Inevitably, they parroted common clichés describing Diana as “pretty”, “a rose”, “Queen of Hearts”, “the people’s princess”, “princess of all”, “everyone’s princess”, and “a Goddess of Virtue” [retch].

Joyce of Abbotsford wrote that Diana’s death was “a lesson to us all”. What lesson would that be, Joyce? ‘Don’t climb into a limo with your Arab boyfriend and his drunken chauffeur on Prozac?’ OK, I promise--as long as Sun readers promise to stop writing hackneyed acronyms for DIANA.

Like Faith from Langley who penned:

D-emure, delightful, delicate, daring, dazzling, devoted

I-rresistible, incomparable, inquisitive, inconceivable, incredible

A-ffectionate, attentive, adventurous, attractive, altruistic

N-oble, nurturer, ‘nchanting, ‘nticing

A-dmired, appreciated, alluring, angel

Of course, DIANA also stood for:

D-anced to Duran Duran

I-mage conscious, self-indulgent trophy wife and clothes hound

A-woman obsessed with her looks

N-ever wore the same dress twice

A-lways slept with rich guys

According to Sun readers, Diana was the ‘nchanting epitome of everything we are not. Stephanie proffered that Diana was “the epitome of grace and style”. Craig retorted that, no, actually “Diana epitomized the triumph of a loving open heart breaking the chains of the stifling expectations of a haughty culture in an often...” Yadda, yadda, yadda. Thanks, Craig. Can’t wait to read your 5th anniversary scribblings. Then there was Michelle’s disturbing love letter to her favourite blue-eyed blonde, where she bleats that “Princess Diana was the epitome of the world’s best people”. Seig heil!

Cried Gerry from Burnaby:

“Let all the poets drop their pens;

Let all the knights drop their swords;

Let all the educated men forget all their educated words;

Long enough for the fathers to gather their daughters and whisper the word “princess”.

It’s a right shame Gerry didn’t drop his pen. Come on, buddy. You had an entire year to think up a poem and that’s the best you could do? It doesn’t even rhyme.

I respect that Diana, like many of our unsung family, friends, and neighbours, did lots of charity appearances. She visited the sickly and said land mines were bad. Keep in mind that the Royal Family are required to cut ribbons, visit life’s unfortunates, murmur “Isn’t that a shame”, and get their pictures in the paper. That’s what the Windsor family does. It’s their job. For doing her job, Diana was paid a king’s ransom in cash, prizes, trips, and pumps.

As a single mum, Diana no longer needed to do Royal charity gigs. However, in the last year of her life, she (1) had more time on her hands than you ever will, (2) held a wicked grudge against her ex-husband, and (3) delighted in upstaging Charlie on the international stage.

Sure, it’s easy to Care™ about a rich beautiful privileged person whom you don’t know and will never meet. It’s selfish, lazy, and requires much less effort than caring for your ugly, anonymous, dirt-poor neighbours who blast their stereo and have a messy yard.

Face it: Diana was popular because she was easy on the eyes, seemed nice, and bagged the richest jock in the class. If Diana was poor, brown, hideous, and smelled, nobody would’ve gived a damn if she lived, died, shopped, or cried.

Whatever your opinion while she was alive, she’s dead and gone now. Get over it. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can not put your idols back together again.

-30-

Published: The Georgia Straight, September 10, 1998