NEWS FLASH!

Late-breaking news: this week we learned that Diana Windsor, the former Princess of Wales, killed ten years ago in a car accident, is...STILL DEAD!

There was a public memorial on the tenth anniversary of her death. Why?

I know that sounds heartless, and I'm sorry. I'm very sorry for her and her family. She was a young woman when she died, and was deprived of many years of a normal life span. Her sons, whom, by all accounts she adored, were deprived of her presence and left to the tender mercies of a father of whom the best thing that might be said is that he has difficulty putting anyone else's interests ahead of his own.

BUT: what did she really do? She was very pretty. (Not beautiful. Sophia Loren is beautiful. Audrey Hepburn was beautiful. Venus and Serena Williams are beautiful. Halle Berry - with short hair - is beautiful. Margot Fontaine was beautiful.) She wore clothes like a dream - but who wouldn't with all the time in the world to work out, a cook to put together delicious low-fat meals, and an unlimited shopping budget? She shook hands gracefully, and put on a Lucite helmet and walked through a no doubt carefully sanitized former minefield. That may be a little unfair, because she did die before she had much chance to do any work with her anti-land-mine association, but really.

She had flaws - as do we all, so that's not exceptional - and not much shame about exposing them. In fact, she did so relentlessly, and apparently with little concern about the effects her behavior might have on her sons. She was, in the current web parlance, an attention whore. Just because she managed at the same time to display some vulnerabilities and a little charm doesn't make all this extended mourning any more reasonable or understandable. Have we become so addicted to emotional extremes that we go looking for reasons to keen, beat our chests, and break out the sackcloth and ashes? Isn't there enough sadness for us in our own lives and those of our families and friends? Do we have to go on these vicarious emotional binges?

And she's going to stay dead, so are we going to have to do this again, and again, and again, and again, at the 15th, 20th, 25th (the Silver Jubilee of the Death of Diana!)and other anniversaries ad infinitum, ad nauseam?