In Her Honor, Get Your Own Life

Princess Diana is dead. They were chasing her.

These sentences are hard to comprehend, and leave all of us who grew up on fairy tales feeling helpless and angry.

With the police still investigating the alleged chase through Paris by paparazzi on motorcycles, I realized there was one small thing I could do. Not do, that is.

When Chelsea Clinton comes to Stanford University with her parents for freshman orientation on Sept. 19, I am not going to follow her around campus. The last time I was at a Stanford registration was when I was a student, and I’m going to keep it that way.

That isn’t much of a blow against celebrity journalism, or for individuals’ right to privacy. But you have to start somewhere. There will be one less gawker at an important rite of passage for a young woman and her family.

They’ve already been stalked by photographers on the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard.

The way it’s shaping up - or was before Diana’s death - far too many journalists will be following a freshman around a campus.

Still, I believe all reporters and photographers will be respectful of the Clintons. When Clinton became president and asked the press to let his daughter have a normal life, the press left her alone.

There still is some decency in the U.S. media. There’s some fear, too, now that Diana’s death has been blamed on the press.

The lines between tabloid and mainstream press have been drawn in very slippery mud.

The National Enquirer and the Globe were ahead of the pack most of the time in the O.J. Simpson trial.

The pack that followed the tabloids consisted of hundreds of legitimate news organizations with reporters standing outside the Los Angeles County Courthouse.

When the verdict in the criminal case against Simpson came down suddenly, I raced to the airport and found myself waiting for a plane with Simpson’s mother and family.

I felt like an accidental stalker. They were very nice people, and I kept questions to a minimum.

When they got off the plane in Los Angeles, Simpson’s mother tried to roll with dignity in her wheelchair through a crowd of newspeople pushing cameras, microphones and dumb questions in her regal face. I backed away from the scrum and hid my notebook while passersby made nasty comments about the media.

Something’s got to be done, and by us. If you buy tabloids, watch celebrity trash TV shows like “Hard Copy” and read newspapers to get slightly more high-toned or ironic celebrity news, then you fueled the photographers’ motorcycles.

Public figures are entitled to privacy, and it’s up to the public to demand that privacy and not pay for the invasions we now see.

You don’t have a life if you live vicariously in the culture of celebrity. You’re stealing from the celebrities, who are simply royalty, actors and musicians who’d like to get on with their lives.

Why do you think celebrities marry each other? They understand each others’ problems. They have to socialize with each other, away from those who crane their necks and talk too loudly about how they don’t look as good as they do on TV or in the movies.

After years of living the nightmare of a bad fairy tale, Diana was finally getting a life. She was having some good times, some good friends and doing good in the world, using her magical presence for those with AIDS and those whose limbs are being blown off by land mines.

She got a life, and photographers chased her to the end of it. Therein lies the worst part of this tragedy, besides two boys losing their mother.

We should do her honor by getting lives of our own.

We must get through the funeral of the late princess first. We may have to look at the faces of her young sons, Harry and William. We definitely will have to see the tears of Britons, through our own tears, of course.

I am no big fan of the royal family, but my grandparents were English and I know how they would feel about a charming young princess like Diana dying before their beloved Queen Mother. I feel that way myself. We all do. We were in love with the mother of a future king.

This was a woman, the one who was going to become the princess of all dreams in the marriage of the century. All she got was a bad marriage in a dysfunctional family, one that requires uniforms, parades and a yearly grind of public smiles and waving. For that she got dragged through cheap newsprint all the way to her death.

I’m angry and almost helpless. What I can do, all I can do, is try to improve the newsprint in my space. It’s all any of us can do.

xxxx