Princess Diana

On Aug 30, 1997, the Princess of Wales died in an automobile accident near the Seine River in France.

She was in flight from a swarm of motorcycle-riding photographers hoping for another lucrative picture of her personal life.

My reaction was one of sadness. I had little interest in Diana, and even less in the vagaries of her husband Charles. However, it always seemed to me that she suffered needlessly; that her beauty and charm had singled her out in ways that only women can understand, and that these qualities would torment her far into the future.

When I heard that she had died of her injuries, I felt a soupçon of relief.

Even so - had she not been badly injured - the British public might have recovered or invented the decency to leave her alone.

The nightmare would have involved her living on in some crippled condition. The public's prurient interest would never have abated.

The more poignant irony is that Princess Diana's  torment might have soon ended.  All that was necessary was to endure the gauntlet a little while longer and she might have achieved contentment.

Some say she was almost there.  If so, the public — which appears to have little interest in  other than  voyeurism, misery, violence and death — would have turned upon other unfortunates.

In the meantime, the public's preoccupation with  details about the lives of the rich and beautiful contributed to Diana's death. Our lust for lurid details had been grinding away at her - and others like her - for decades.

The industry servicing this wretched business has become so intrusive that it is now creating news in a grotesque parody of masturbation.

Admittedly, it was not ' the public' mounted upon motorcycles and brandishing flash cameras in this fatal business.  Even so, these riders were in the employ of, or hoping to sell to,  voyeuristic magazines.  These riders were 'publicly-funded  dicks'.

The only useful indictment in the matter of  Princess Diana's death is that  the British populations is as guilty as sin.

North Americans and Europeans are equally culpable.

We should all be ashamed.