they were just easy targets.

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Subject: Agree with your Di & media comments From: Jim Dreier-Lawrence (dreierlaw@edgenet.net) Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 23:37:19 -0700 I think you were right in the comments you made regarding Princess Di and the paparazzi. Regarding the automobile accident you mentioned, there was a recent fatal one car accident in the Providence, R.I., area where four young (early 20s, I believe) people were killed when their car ran head on into a building. Relatives of the driver were very angry with police for not being able to find the driver of a second vehicle that they were sure must have been involved and must have forced her off the road. Well, it turned out after investigation that there was no second car, no skid marks, no attempt to brake, she had been driving 80-90 m.p.h. (in a 25 m.p.h. zone), had a very high blood alcohol level -- well above legally drunk -- and had simply driven straight into the building. Subject: What we've lost From: D.C. Cyberfox (CyberFox7@aol.com) Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 19:56:52 -0400 I am curious as to why there is so much blame foisted upon the media (or those who consume it). Princess Di was killed by alcohol. Just like many thousands of others. This is nothing new for alcohol. It has been killing and maiming people in similar manner for many years. I really wonder why so many people blame the media. What I'm really wondering is if this is not a symptom of a strong -- but not fully conscious -- fear of losing privacy. Princess Di falls into the poverty category when it comes to personal privacy. She had none. Could it be the collective anger that we all feel for losing privacy being channeled into blamecasting of the media? People need private spaces, but those spaces are rapidly disappearing. Media, marketing, employers, and the computer are all contributing to the erosion of personal privacy. Have these fears erupted totally in the blamethrowing combatants surrounding the lovely, late Princess Di? The loss of Princess Di is tragic. I'm very sad. And my sorrow was unexpectedly deepened... I was at a birthday party of a friend. This friend, Anna, had been telling me for a long time about a neat friend of hers, Carol. She had also been telling Carol about me. There were no romantic overtones: Carol is happily married as am I. Anna knows Carol and she knows me and she always thought we would like each other. But Carol was in China, then Korea, for many months. So although I heard about all of her adventures I had never actually met her. So this party was the party where I actually got to meet Carol. I sat next to her that night at dinner. She astonished me with both her elegant beauty and her sharp intellect. Her English accent coordinated them both perfectly. At dinner, Carol and I began talking about news and how we get it and what we think about it. I told her that I get a news feed on my pager and I pulled out my pager to show her. I brought up the news feed at which point I read about Princess Di's death. I said, "I can't believe it. Princess Di is dead." I showed Carol the pager. She refused to believe it. She thought I was having a fun time making a sick practical joke. She thought I had put that information into the pager myself. She looked at me and told me that she didn't believe this, that she wasn't that gullible. Then I looked at her, my eyes expressing seriousness and truth, and I said, "Carol, I would never joke about something like this." She felt the truth in my words. At that point something happened, something quite ineffable. We were there, looking at each other, and I saw how, in her eyes, a sense of sorrow, like high velocity shrapnel, ripped its way through her defenses, penetrating deeply as few things can. And I felt it too. Something that I saw in her eyes, like her loss or her sense of sadness, somehow became mine as well. And then, suddenly, just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. She blinked, turned away, and we continued the party as if nothing had happened. She is, we can safely say, more sophisticated than I, certainly more socially sophisticated. I lack the ability to simply switch channels like that. My wife looked at me and said that I was extremely pale and questioned me as to what happened. I said that it was because Princess Di had died. Everyone else at the table was either Russian or from India. It was difficult for them to understand. Even for me, it would have been an improbable reach without the bridge to that sorrow which Carol provided. Carol is the same age as Di, beautiful, intelligent, and British. She reflected the loss perfectly, like the female mirror of the English psyche, even in the way she, without further ado, simply changed the subject and began speaking of something else, forcing that sorrow down and inside, to be opened up, approached and dealt with at the appropriate time and the appropriate place. I remained incapable of conversation for the remainder of the evening. Carol is gone now, in Russia until Christmas. I had so looked forward to finally getting to meet her -- to have myself rendered so incapable of conversation is too bad. I feel like the meeting went crazily astray. Like a long looked forward to, long hoped for meeting, that comes about finally by walking in on the person in the bathroom. The events forced an intimacy onto a relationship with no history and nothing to support it. But had it not been for her I would never have understood what we lost. We lost something important and we lost something valuable. I don't understand exactly what or why. I understand, however, that the tragedy of our loss is severe, more severe than I could have imagined. I am grateful to Carol for communicating that. I needed to know that. Tears, voicing my sorrow, now sing in that collective song.