A Tragic Princess

Operation Luna, 4.

"'...I'd been brooding somewhat over Princess Tamako of Japan. Who didn't, back at that time?'
"Me, for one. I'd thought those several days of global grief and display were mainly hysteria. True, so violent an end to so stormy and embittered a life was tragic; but tragedy happens somewhere along the line to all of us." (p. 35)

Here is another parallel between Earth Goetic and Earth Real and I am all the way with Steve Matuchek on this one. When Aileen told me, "Princess ----- is dead," I did not suspect what we were about to be subjected to although I should have known. There was definitely an alternative view in Britain which was entirely suppressed by the media. One tabloid newspaper had published an edition as usual that morning, then, in the evening, rushed out a revised edition with the outer pages expressing shock and grief about the death even though the unrevised inner pages still carried a column slagging off the deceased in extremely unpleasant personal terms.

I began to notice this much earlier in life because of the contradictions between what is said about public figures before and after their deaths. One national newspaper tried to have it both ways: a certain politician represented everything that they were against but they could not forbear to say something good about him, nevertheless. They patted themselves on the back for simultaneously being anti-racist while magnanimously finding something good to say about an avowed racist. Some of the minority alternative press is at least consistent.

I watched the Funeral because I am interested in how society ritualizes the deaths of people that it regards as important. One entrepreneur seemed to be treating the occasion as a photo opportunity.