I really
have little or no interest in the anniversary of Princess Diana’s
death. I had little interest in her while she was alive. Or rather,
since I did not know her, I should say that I had little interest in
the media image that purported to be her. I think her death was as
much of a tragedy as it would be for anyone else who died so young
and in such a dreadful way and I feel for her sons, who lost their
mother far too early. None of that, however, extends further than it
would for anyone else I did not know.
So I’ve done my best to avoid the weeks of mawkishness surrounding the tenth anniversary of Diana’s demise and the attempts to force her gorgeous corpse to dance once more for the crowds. I’d like to make one point though because this has been a source of increasing irritation to me. It’s easily summed up in this phrase from the Houston Chronicle:
Her
extensive charity work — she championed causes such as those
suffering AIDS or injured by landmines — led former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair to label her the "people's princess."
Princess Diana undoubtedly did a fair bit for any number of charities and I’m quite willing to believe that her celebrity was a shot in the arm to many of them. What I find absolutely confounding, though, is the level of sheer veneration that attaches to the woman for her charitable works. Quite simply, what else was she meant to do?
Diana Windsor -and this holds for the whole wretched grasp(1) of royals- had enormous material wealth, privilege and leisure thrust upon her. Or rather, she married into it, while others were born to it. From her marriage onwards (and from much earlier frankly, since the Spencers hardly lived on that kind of estate), Diana never had to worry about money, food or shelter for herself or any of her loved ones. It is not merely that all her material needs were met – a prize enough in itself. Virtually all her conceivable material wants were also catered for. Short of having lake Windermere filled with Dream Topping or a bed manufactured entirely from the dreams of small children, she was minted.
So with all of that daily drudgery taken care of, the trivia that occupies 70% of most people’s waking hours, what did she have left to do? Work anyway? Possibly, but if you’re working at a job you enjoy for no reason than because you enjoy it then it’s pretty much a hobby. That leaves recreation of one sort or another: hobbies, sports, travel and so on. Even so called 'royal duties' involves little more than being ferried from factory to function, eating meals, reading speeches you didn’t write and being fawned over by the little people. Prince Edward wasted his time with a toy television company making programmes no one watched and, while Prince Harry is allowed to be a soldier, this is on the express condition that he never go anywhere he might get shot. Prince Charles produces biscuits so expensive that he's one of the few people who can afford them but I doubt he does much baking.
So with all that free time, money, profile and, let’s be honest, power, should we expect anything less than that they use their clout for humanitarian ends? Should it not be the least we expect for that enormous privilege? Why on earth should we think they deserve praise for doing what, in any reasonable analysis, is the absolute bare minimum? Devoting a solid portion of every day to charity should be the default for a member of the royal family in return for the obscene wealth that fate and the absence of a decent revolution has dropped in their lap.
Imagine
that an ‘ordinary’ person gives two hours of their weekend to a
charity -do they then receive adulation and worship? Should they? I
would say no but I’m certain that they, who give away a couple of
hours of their extremely limited free time outside of work, deserve
far more adulation and praise than the woman who gave some of her
almost unlimited free time to the causes that interested her. It’s
probably infeasible but I wonder if one could perform a calculation
of how much time Diana actually devoted to charity during an average
week against how much was spent skiing or living it up with Dodi
Fayed. The relevant moral question is not the sum total of the good
that you do but the good you do compared with your capacity. I
learned as a child the parable about the wealthy man who gives much –
without a pinch - compared with the widow who gives but a penny but
feels its loss.
Venerating royalty for charitable works is part of our culture of deference and our semi-conscious resignation to absurd double standards. I’m reminded of a story in the Daily Mail in the wake of the Tsunami of December 2004 that ravaged Indonesia, Thailand and elsewhere. Under the heading ‘The business giants just keep on giving’ the Mail gloried in the fact that
On day
one of the Flood Aid appeal Debenhams offered to help by allowing customers
to make donations at the tills in 107 department stores.(2)
Note that they apparently didn't give themselves, they
allowed their customers to donate. That’s generosity enough for the Mail. Likewise, we
are encouraged to worship the rock stars who take a couple of hours
out from their gluttonous lifestyles to encourage the rest of us to
save Africa, save the world or whatever. Charity telethons are manned
by selfless celebrities whose collective earnings dwarf the relative
pittance raised. And all the while, we are told about how generous
they are, how they do ‘a lot of work for charity’. No, they do
not. They do some work for charity and yet they frequently receive (and perhaps expect) adulation in
return. Yes, it is good that they do it but people in that position should be expected to do it. The people who are really selfless are those people who work
hard for charities -who burn themselves out year after year working
long hours for the sort of salary that Jonathan Ross could fritter
away in a day. When you see footage of Diana wandering around a
former minefield in Angola, all immaculate white blouse and beautiful like a
winter sunset, remember she was not the hero. The hero was the woman
you didn’t see, who spent every day there, in a stifling office with only
occasional electricity working in obscurity for a derisory salary for
a cause she believed in. And Elton John never sang a song for her.
(1) My current nomination for a suitable collective noun.
(2) 'The business giants just keep on giving', Daily Mail, 5th January 2005.
