From: Brooklyn
Category: Amis
Date: 7/23/99
Time: 2:12:50 PM
Remote Name: 207.238.28.10
Finally, the healing can begin. More importantly men can regain control of their tv. Across the land the same scene played out as women commandeered the remotes in sheer disbelief. After 3 minutes you knew as much as you'd learn over the next 3 days. Luckily, there was precedent and the networks were ready. Jennings, Brokaw, & Rather high-tailed it to work and the show was on. No surprises this time, it was all orchestrated.
Here's Rushdie on the "feedback loop" taken from an interview with Salon.com:
"After Diana's death, there clearly was, for five minutes, a very large, spontaneous outpouring of grief, which took everybody by surprise, including most of the media. Nobody expected it to be that big. But the moment that this, if you like, pure, unmediated phenomenon had been recognized, the weight of media attention hurled at it -- within 48 hours -- created a different phenomenon. Instead of responding in a completely uninstructed way, people were doing what they'd seen on television. The thing had become a quotation of itself. This is the loop. And that loop has now become so tight, because of the speed of mass communications, that it's very difficult to separate an event from the media response to it."
And then, of course, there's Martin's piece *A Mirror of Ourselves* from Time Magazine; what I consider to be a balls-to-the-wall piece of writing.
"Yet the fact remains that Diana was far less dedicated than, for instance, her onetime sister-in-law, Princess Anne, whose want of looks long ago consigned her to near total obscurity. Let's face it: we're a planet of looks snobs."
Although I, too, am an unbearably good looking man (as you've probably sensed) it pisses me off that what Amis wrote above is at the core of this whole story. If Junior had been an ugly mutt (or fat) nobody would give two shits. All this collective weeping? This emotional connection everyone felt toward this man? I just don't get it. It's just good tv, being put on by a bunch of people still infatuated with the late President.