Mourning sickness

[MensWorldMayfair]

20,000 to 60,000 people?

I thought you were an Ipswich Town fan. You must've hit an extra zero by mistake...

[Illinoisblue]

Okay, 20,000 on a good day at Ipswich - lots more in the premiership!

[The Last Word]

Agreed, though whether the river of crocodile tears for our self-titled Queen of Hearts was as rich with the actual public as the media would have you believe is difficult to say. The media were certainly upset, of course. Losing their number one cash cow. Didnt stop them flogging her further mind.

As for the public, and as with the Fathers 4 Justice circus mentioned elsewhere, there is a questionable ideal at work here where doing something in public somehow validates the sincerity of feeling, whether it's actually there or not. Does it all work on the cynical principle that we only trust what we see with our eyes? Perhaps fear and mistrust of things kept private are swimming around in there too. Murky waters indeed.

[RetroDon]

The period after Diana's death was the worst time I can remember having to live through.... The false grief, the mass hysteria, nothing on the radio, Tony Blair, Elton John... made me feel sick, there was no escaping it.
A shining example of how people are "told to feel", and how they don't/can't think for themselves anymore.