diana is dead

“The death of one is a tragedy The death of one is a tragedy The death of one is a tragedy The death of a million is just a statistic” -from The Fight Song by Marilyn Manson

14 years ago

the then-princess of wales,

diana

spencer,

was killed in a car accident,

with her boyfriend & driver---

the world mourned.

 

well,

to be more specific,

an ambiguous portion of the world

mourned---

“millions of people” in the world are said to have

sobbed,

because this woman died---

a woman, whose wedding cost alone,

could have financed a year’s AIDS/HIV retroviral therapy for over

16,000 people in South Africa

(as a random example of something the world needed more

than princess di’s “fairytale wedding”)---

the cost of her exorbitant 18 carat blue sapphire & diamond

ring alone ($65,000 in 1981)

could supply a year’s supply of therapy for 23 people---

just for a

dash

of perspective.

 

today,

i saw the cover of LIFE magazine,

which presently displays diana’s picture on the cover---

this picture was probably taken when she was in her late

20’s

(giving her that “youthful” appearance of the princess that everyone

wants to remember, and not the woman who wore a flak vest while

protesting landmines in her latter years---which some call her “loose

cannon” years, where she was involving herself in political issues),

when she died at age

36.

 

diana has been dead now for over a decade,

and the people at LIFE

can find nothing better to put on the cover of their magazine---

not one more important story or

living

person

in the whole world over,

and to top it off,

beside her youthful portrait,

the words

“Diana at 50”

are scrawled.

 

the magazine is to be sold at your local grocery

until

september 2^nd---

that means that LIFE not only decided that there was

nothing or no one more important &

more relevant

to our present moment,

than this woman who has been dead for

14 years---

but they have decided that for the next three months,

there will not be anything more important & relevant

either.

 

need more perspective?

the totality of this absurdity hasn’t quite set in

yet?

 

consider the fact that in the united states alone,

9 people are estimated to die every

minute & in the world altogether, estimates run anywhere between

107 & 160---this means that in the time it has taken you

to get this far down the page,

depending on how fast a reader you are,

at least a 100 people in the world have died

whose faces you will never see,

whose names you will never know,

whose lives will not be splayed out in an

international magazine,

a decade from now.

 

diana’s televised wedding at st. paul’s in 1981

was supposedly viewed by

750 million people---

her ring cost more than most people’s yearly

salary & millions are said to have

watched her funeral as well,

which of course,

was also televised.

she is dead.

diana is dead.

dead as a doornail &

it is time for the celebrity-worshippers of the world

to just

let

go.

 

 

* AIDS/HIV retroviral therapy stats are taken from the Center for International Health and Development at Boston University’s 2006 report, “How Much Does It Cost to Provide Antiretroviral Therapy for HIV/AIDS in Africa?”---while these stats may be a bit outdated, the point being made here should not lose one iota of its emphasis.