Triumph of the Banal

Theodore Dalrymple has an excellent assessment of the cult of Princess Diana in City Journal. The newly revealed details of Diana's sexual escapades would have damaged her reputation in any age but our own. Her cult is based upon intense but shallow emotion; her celebrity results from no meaningful achievement. "She was too self-absorbed" to be interested in anything but herself." In fact, her narcissistic mediocrity is precisely what appeals to people who dream of celebrity, riches, and a sex-suffused life without accomplishment; her popularity represents the "triumph of the banal." Far from being tortured as the result of complexity, she betrays a simple, deep inner emptiness which reflects that of her followers who pursue distraction from the void, just as she did, with sensation-seeking.

The modern soul is sometimes an ugly thing to contemplate.