Still Generating Schemes

The sad and silly Cult of Diana, Princess of Tarts, continues ad infinitum. Hardly to be believed. That this lost soul, this egotistically self-serving nonentity who was born to a life of privilege and whom destiny served up as a major irritant for a long-serving monarch who deserved far better from all of her children still bedevils us is beyond belief. Not she in and of herself, needless to say, but the myth of what she was not.

In the last word of venal aspiration, the two designers given the opportunity to create a garment for the royal wedding are offering the opportunity to Diana-cultists to own a piece of the fabric out of which her wedding gown was constructed. With amazing foresight, the designers had laid away the bolt of silk for an opportune time in history which even such as they might never have imagined would take place.

That silly, wretched excuse for a thinking and intelligent woman besmirched herself by her self-absorbed activities, her stage-managed emotional tantrums and her low-minded attractions. And for her troubles had the adulation of the public. Which defeats intelligence and understanding, both. After her death, which in its happenstance execution mirrored the stupidity of her life, the world was set on a course of frenzied mourning.

A mass outpouring of grief resembling nothing so much as a pathological disease sweeping over several continents drenched the world in maudlin sorrow at the too-early death of this most deserving personage, beloved of all. Her memory was handily exploited by every eager entrepreneur who could think up a scheme fast enough to evade the law of copyright.

Until her family took over and soberly established a charitable institution which would absorb the profits to be made by the exploitation of this overwhelming grief-by-association. Even her brother sought to profit, to swell his estate and his squalid reputation by aligning himself with her memory and setting up an appropriate shrine on his property.

Now the latest artifact of "remembering a princess extraordinaire" has been aired. For the modest sum of one thousand dollars, one of one thousand swatches measuring roughly 26 square centimetres can be had with a copy of A Dress for Diana, produced by the husband-and-wife team of dress designers who had the foresight to ensure a lucrative future for themselves.

Ugh.