The British are not alone in their grief over the untimely death of Princess Diana. People in the United States and throughout the world share in a feeling of shock and profound sadness at this senseless tragedy. It has united people in a common bond of mourning, and it ought to make people everywhere search inward and examine the way society treats those endowed with fame and notoriety.
Diana was an eloquent spokeswoman for worthy causes and was ennobled with many humanitarian desires. She sought people in need and dared to bridge the gap between royalty and commoner in ways rarely, if ever, seen before. She was unafraid to shake the hands of lepers and AIDS victims, and she tried to bring attention to the problems created by land mines throughout the world. She tried in genuine ways to redirect the media obsession with her life toward issues that deserve more attention.In this she often failed. The British tabloids, in particular, seemed more interested in the private and personal details of her life than in those people she tried to help. Indeed, her life was marked by sadness and frustration, the opposite of what most expected from such a charmed life. There was, of course, her divorce from Prince Charles, but the relentless hounding of freelance photographers, the paparazzi, ensured she never would be truly free or happy.
The facts of Diana's death are not yet known. New evidence indicates her driver may have been intoxicated. People who were so eager to cast blame over the weekend would be wise to withhold judgment. But what is known is that the paparazzi were pursuing her at full speed on motorcycles when the accident that took her life occurred. Regardless of their role in the tragedy, these vultures were little more than bounty hunters, ready to distort her life for profit. She often pleaded with them to leave her alone, but they refused, hoping to score a rare compromising photo that would fatten their own wallets.
For this, they hold the lion's share of guilt for exploitation, but they are not alone. Anyone who ever has purchased a tabloid to satisfy a morbid desire for titillating details into the life of a celebrity shares some blame. Compromising photos pay off only because they attract customers. Americans may have difficulty understanding the British obsession with royalty, but Americans are little different in the way they treat movie stars, rocks stars and, in some cases, politicians.
Diana's death is a call to look inward. People have a natural interest in the lives of the famous, but without a moral code that checks this desire with discretion and decency, interest turns to obsession and voyeurism.
Diana combined all the elements that attract attention. She was beautiful. She had a fairytale marriage to a prince. She had a life most people only dream of. But she was a human being, with human emotions and feelings.
To paraphrase another great person from England, William Shakespeare, hath not a princess hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winters and summers as common people? If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh? If you poison them, do they not die?
When it comes to its celebrities, the paparazzi and the rest of the world should learn the quality of mercy.