It's what one would have wanted
April 8, 2008 7:27 PM   Subscribe

Will the end of the marathon inquest into the death of Princess Diana leave you bereft, with no further purpose in life? Me neither. But if you still need some of the Lady Di magic in your life, perhaps you need the Lady Diana talking action figure! It "...captures all of the exquisiteness and beauty of Diana - only $129.95".
posted by idiomatika (14 comments total)
 
Does it come with a car?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:28 PM on April 8, 2008


I want one.

A lot.
posted by emperor.seamus at 7:45 PM on April 8, 2008


Call me when someone starts selling reproductions of the Harrods bronze.
posted by the littlest brussels sprout at 7:48 PM on April 8, 2008


Kill it... with fire?
posted by Krrrlson at 7:58 PM on April 8, 2008


It does actually capture all her exquisiteness & beauty, every last drop of it.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:18 PM on April 8, 2008




This has been an embarrassment to the legal profession, the media and Britain more generally.

Let’s start at first causes. No amount of agitation from Fayed, abetted by the Daily Express, should have called into doubt the independent police investigations by the French Police and later by the Metropolitan Police. That he has been able to do so has brought the enquiry system (political by nature) and the legal system into disrepute.

Secondly, the lawyers: at a time when the legal profession is fighting desperate, rear-guard actions to preserve what little remains of the civil legal aid system and trying to ensure that quality defence is available to all in criminal proceedings, the sight of m’learned friends trousering £600 an hour at the taxpayers expense discussing a foregone conclusion has done us no favours at all.

On the plantiff's side, I yield to few in my admiration of Michael Mansfield QC but Fayed didn’t need counsel – he needed grief counselling. The great silk should have used those advocacy skills to persuade him thus.

Finally let’s turn to the three-ring circus that the media has turned this into. It’s been over 10 years since Diana’s death but still the media can’t turn the page. If Diana was celebrity gold, since her passing the tabloids have lived on far baser metals. Colleen McLoughlin as humanitarian icon? Please. Fuck off.

What has this tawdry spectacle said about us as a people? Lots; nothing good. For me, the stand-out phenomenon has been the death of English reserve. Replaced by an affected, mawkish sentimentality for a romanticised, rose-tinted view of reality.
posted by dmt at 3:31 AM on April 9, 2008


I'm hoping for "Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."
Or something choice from Squidygate.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:10 AM on April 9, 2008


I hope when I die they make an action figure of me with karate-chop action!
posted by cjorgensen at 8:58 AM on April 9, 2008


fearfulsymmetry, you beat me to it!
posted by nax at 11:26 AM on April 9, 2008


LOL! What the hell? That's kind of in bad taste. Plus, who in their right mind is gonna want to buy that? Well for that price anyway. :P
posted by ralph9 at 11:39 AM on April 9, 2008


Actually hasn't the Franklin Mint been churning out Diana statues for years... ? I'm sure I remember seeing 'Mine Clearing Diana'
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:59 AM on April 9, 2008


This has been an embarrassment to the legal profession, the media and Britain more generally.

Well, I agree with you about the 'tawdry spectacle'. But it doesn't change my view that the inquest had to happen. For years, Fayed has been making vicious and libellous allegations about other people. He has used his money, and his connections with the media, to spread these allegations as widely as possible. And his victims were not just the rich and powerful, who could afford to ignore him, but a great many humbler people who had no way to protect their reputations. (Who in their right mind would sue Fayed for libel?) He had to be stopped. If the inquest has done nothing else. it has at least exposed Fayed as a paranoid fantasist, and ensured that nothing he says will ever be believed again. And that has to be a good thing.

It's easy to be superior about the Diana inquest, and to say that the whole thing was a 'foregone conclusion' (which to you and me, of course it was). But the conspiracy theories about Diana's death are more widely believed than you may realise. I've never met anyone who believed Fayed's wilder fantasies, but I've heard a great many people say, vaguely, that there was 'something funny' about Diana's death, that the security services were probably involved 'in some way', and that 'we'll probably never know the whole story'. No doubt conspiracy theories will always be with us, but they are becoming so alarmingly widespread that they need to be challenged wherever possible. The Diana inquest has done a great deal to undermine the whole Diana conspiracy industry, and again that has to be a good thing.
posted by verstegan at 3:34 AM on April 10, 2008


The Diana inquest has done a great deal to undermine the whole Diana conspiracy industry, and again that has to be a good thing.

Meh. Broadly, we're on the same page. But I don't agree that ten million quid of taxpayer’s money needed to be spent to prove that Fayed is a paranoid fantasist and that the gullible will always be with us. Lots of people believed that a WWII bomber had been found on the moon. That didn't justify a feeding frenzy and nor should Diana's death. A poor precedent has been set.

Moreover, people who think that there's something a bit fishy going on and that the security services might have been involved in some way are simply not going to be persuaded by this inquest. They're going to see it as an establishment whitewash so it fails your efficacy test too.
posted by dmt at 5:07 AM on April 10, 2008


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