Televised spectacle inverts public and private, conflates fact and myth, and turns it all into an undifferentiated puree of Celebrity and Entertainment. Diana's love life is infinitely more entertaining than the local school board. And how much easier to grieve Diana's loss than to wrestle with our own personal losses and family heroics. We experience it all, conveniently and remotely, deeply affected at one remove. In this symbiosis, we egg each other on, as if drugged.
Television operates as a distorting, magnifying mirror for our passions.
It doesn't lower itself to hire pararazzi, but it covers the coverage and then professes self-criticism. But the press is being crucified for the wrong set of sins. Celebrity and television feed on one another, and crowd out what matters. Celebrity and entertainment are so much easier than the dull steady work of playing civic roles in a functioning democracy, or honorable and compassionate roles in a family. Diana's death was of course real and deeply sad for her loved ones.