Online NewsHour: Princess Diana Remembered -- September 1, 1997

ROGER ROSENBLATT: I think, Jim, it's because Diana represented beauty in the world and the feeling of loss is the loss of the presence of beauty and not just physical beauty, although she had that in Princess Diana

abundance. But as the detection on the part of those who never knew here that this was a generous, good soul, quiet voice, kind eyes, disposition toward the suffering and those in distress, and the ill, for whom she worked, and all embodied in somebody who was just a joy to look at. So all the thoughts that people have about the many pictures of Princess Di and how many times she was photographed actually has a positive aspect of it, I think, because people want to see somebody so worth seeing.

JIM LEHRER: Somebody so worth seeing, Elise O'Shaughnessy? Your magazine, what, two months ago had her on the cover and several pictures inside. Is this a loss of beauty? Princess Diana

ELISE O'SHAUGHNESSY, Vanity Fair: Something terribly important in her story--in fact, she is so beautiful that without our intending to, we ended up putting her the cover of the magazine a third time. The Mias Pestino photographs that were in our July issue and Princess Diana

graced the cover of our July issue were intended for an inside spread to coincide with the Sotheby's charity auction. And when we saw them, we just thought these can't go inside; she is too beautiful; she's as beautiful as any movie star, but I think that the interesting thing about her and perhaps a deeper significance to a lot of people, and I've talked to a lot of women today about their reaction to her, was that she represented a modern version of the fairytale, which is all very well, you go and you marry the prince, but what happens when the prince turns out to be a louse, and it's a very 20th century story of someone who really took the reins and made a very difficult situation work for her in the end.

JIM LEHRER: Doris, how do you see--how do you read this enormous--a lot of people are being surprised Princess Diana

by the way the world--not just the people in Britain, but the people in this country and all over the world have responded to her death. Are you surprised?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Presidential Historian: Oh, I must say I have been surprised too. I talked to a man the other night. He said that after he listened to the news that night he couldn't sleep all night. Now, here's a person who's never seen her. She had no impact on his life. It affected him physically the Princess Diana

way mourning really affects you. And the only way I can understand it--but in some ways her life provided a story--as was just said, it started out as a fairytale, then we saw the underside of vulnerability, and then after the unseemly divorce she somehow was determined to rebuild her life. And that's when she began going to leper colonies, going to AIDS patients, touching them in a way that few people wouldn't. And I think it then ends violently, ends instantaneously, so this young person is always young. But the really interesting question is not just what she was but why do we respond that way? And I can only understand that the rise of celebrity is a 20th century phenomena, with the rise of mass media, newspapers, and with the move from the city--from the country, rather, to the city. People used to gossip around their neighborhoods in local bars, in local stores. They could really gossip about people they knew. We don't know these people, but this is the substitute in an anonymous world we live in--gossip about people we don't even know that somehow affects us, because it's in our living rooms every day. It's crazy at some level.

JIM LEHRER: David Halberstam was quoted today as saying that we live through celebrities now; we live our lives through celebrities, which is the point you're making--

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Absolutely. And I don't know that it makes a lot of sense, but it's real, but I can't deny that it's happening out there. Princess Diana

JIM LEHRER: Michael Elliott, as a Briton--I read today that Princess Di--Princess Diana was considered the most famous woman in the world. Is that an accurate statement?

MICHAEL ELLIOTT, Newsweek: I think so probably. I was in London yesterday when the news broke. I was staying with a friend and woken up at 7:15. So I got some of the immediate reaction to her death in Britain. And although she was huge all over the world, she was beyond huge in Britain.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Princess Diana

Her life in the public eye bracketed a period for about a decade and a half in which Britain changed more than most nations managed in a century or two. And I think Britain's watched her change with them. It's difficult to understand now how bleak Britain was and felt in the summer of 1981, when she married Prince Charles. That was a summer of race riots. It was a summer in which the economy was completely tanking, and here was this kind of fairytale wedding, with this teenager, effectively, I think actually she was just 20, this complete ingenue, from actually rather an uninteresting class--that is to say the landowning aristocracy.

By the time she died on Sunday morning she had become what you might call the new Brits thought, epitomized themselves at their best, cosmopolitan, hating the country, but loving the city, absolutely at ease in different societies and in different settings, unhung up by people's sexual orientation, or ethnic background. And the reaction on Sunday morning, particularly from people under 35, was absolutely astonishing. I mean, it just took my breath away. And to an extent, it still does. And I think the secret is that they saw her grow and change as the country grew and changed. And they ended up loving her because she was, if you like, and this is a phrase that's been used about royalty beforeshe was a mirror to their better selves, or at least to the selves that they wanted to be.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Absolutely. And, of course, what she did--I mean, I thought the comment made by Doris Kearns Goodwin awhile ago about celebrity was absolutely right--what she did was give celebrity a twist. I mean, we know that Jackie Onassis was beautiful and coped with grief marvelously. And we know that Barbara Streisand is clever and so on and so forth. I can't think of another celebrity who touched the lives of so many in such a direct and such a compassionate way. I mean, the pictures that Elise has shown are extraordinary, you know, pictures are picking up babies with AIDS patients, what have you.

JIM LEHRER: Tish Baldrige, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis analogy--Michael just made that--and others have--is it a valid one?

LETITIA BALDRIGE, Former White House Social Secretary: Oh, I think it's very valid. Jackie was our star, our movie star. The country needed one. We needed all that glamour and excitement. And Diana Princess Diana

certainly brought it to Great Britain. But I think when that accident happened when she was killed, the shock of her--the way she went--you could almost hear the noise, the explosion, the impact. Then you started to think of her children, boys, the boys, motherless. And then you started to think of the monarchy, so stiff and so uptight, having lost this great jewel in its crown, this wonderful, warm, young woman, who was always making mistakes and going to shrinks and talking on the air about her love affairs and everything else, but she was so human in her foibles, and everybody loved her for that.

The monarchy was shaken and made much warmer, and so I think she had a major impact on her own country, Princess Diana

as well as the rest of the country. Mothers wanted their daughters to look like her. They all said, look at the way she walks, look at the way she sits with her knees properly together, and crossed at the ankle; look at the way she moves, listen to that beautiful, mellifluous voice. Everybody wanted her voice. So she was a star, a 19-year-old who got married and looked like a stuffed Raggedy Ann doll when she got married, and wore the worst clothes the first three years of her life, and then became a glamorous siren. Every woman wants to be that way. And all the men kept picking up her pictures and looking at them, whether they were 90 or seven years old. All the men, as well as the women, wanted to look at her pictures.

JIM LEHRER: So she became the woman who died in that tunnel the other day right before our very eyes, in other words?

LETITIA BALDRIGE: No. No. If she had died in a hospital, after a long, horrible disease, or something, it would have been much easier to take, but we'll always remember that accident in the tunnel. It's a moment of history, like John F. Kennedy's being shot, Martin Luther King. There are moments of history that we remember because of the terrible thing--the way a person lost his life.

JIM LEHRER: She was a most unusual celebrity. I mean, there is no--Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, would you not agree with this first, Tish, that while they both were stars, they were very different kinds of stars?

LETITIA BALDRIGE: Different purposes in life. Jackie was a woman who was raised in a family where they read a lot of books, and she had a marvelous education. She spoke many languages. She went on state visits with the President, sat next to the head of state in each country, and helped relay foreign policy. She was a working President in many ways. Princess Diana

LETITIA BALDRIGE: And Diana had a great time, except when she went over across the seas on her wonderful missions of mercy. And she loved children, and she had this wonderful compassion, but Jackie had a brilliance and intellectuality too. So you can't compare them.

JIM LEHRER: Can't compare them. But the celebrity--the idea that Diana was the ultimate celebrity, that she was a Princess Diana

created celebrity, and that's what our culture now creates, and she was the No. 1.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: I think that she was an entirely different sort of creature than celebrity. And the observation that was made before that we live our lives through celebrity and, therefore, through her, I don't think applied to her at all. I think she was a natural. They come along once in a blue moon, a Fred Astaire who can dance, or a Michael Jordan who can jump, or an Ella Fitzgerald who can sing, and this woman could simply be. And when you see that, when you see--I don't know what it is--the example of nature perfecting itself, getting as good as it can look--then all you do is sort of sit back and gasp and Princess Diana

watch and applaud. I don't remember anything very brilliant that Diana ever said. I don't remember anything extraordinarily witty that she said. There was certainly a super abundance of kindness in her, and we saw all that.But the main--the main thing that we saw was somebody who achieved stardom as if she was born to it. And when that happens--which is so rare--there is this kind of gasping, extraordinary, overwhelmed appreciation, and, therefore, the loss is palpable.

JIM LEHRER: Doris, do you buy that, that she was--what her number one strength was, that she was just there?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, I think it couldn't have been possible a century ago without pictures, without television. I mean, can you imagine if we were just reading about that wedding ceremony, if we were reading about her interviews that she gave on television? It was the aliveness that came through in the pictures, the beauty that came through in the pictures that we take to ourselves. And I think that diminishes the idea that this is some extraordinary person. I mean, I think she was a photogenic person in a photogenic age, in an age that clamors up the need for pictures. And those pictures entered our living rooms, our kitchens, and we lived with them. And then the picture of the car, so crushed, is such a sad ending to the beauty that we saw before that, but I don't know that it means it makes her one of a kind. I think she fit the spirit of our age right now, but I can think of a lot of people that will be very different in the future that will be celebrities in a far more substantial way.

JIM LEHRER: Elise O'Shaughnessy, what's your view of that, whether she was one of a kind?

ELISE O'SHAUGHNESSY: Well, I tend to agree with the theory that she was of an age, and one of the things--it wasn't just that she was photogenic. She was also very self-revelatory. And that was something that not everybody admired her for. That very controversial interview in which she spilled her guts about everything and it was something where a lot of people felt that she should have kept it to herself, and where Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Onassis, would have certainly have kept it to herself, so I think that in a sense it was Diana's willingness to share everything with everybody that made her (a), the ideal subject of gossip and (b), the ideal celebrity for an age where everybody shares everything.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Michael Elliott, in Britain, that everybody just--they wanted to know everything about her, and it was available to them, and that's what's made her what she was, or how--

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: I think Elise's comments are absolutely to the point. I think the interview that she gave in November 1995--

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: The long BBC interview--was a great point in public perceptions of her partly because there was this extraordinary honest self-revelatory aspect to it, but the self-revelatory nature of it helped other people. I mean, one of my best friends is one of Europe's leading experts on postpartum depression. She was ecstatic after that interview. She was absolutely ecstatic that finally someone who

women would listen to was going to talk about postpartum depression, bulemia, and everything else. So, I mean, although it was self-revelatory and we enjoyed the window into Princess Diana's soul, it also had--it also had a wider import. Of course, she was photogenic; of course, she wouldn't have been quite as famous, quite as notorious around the world, without television. But that's the way the world is now. It's not going to change. I mean, this is a visual world. We can't judge people by the standards that would have applied in the 19th century, when you would have seen line drawings in Punch or the Illustrated London News and report of their speech. I mean, you have to take the world as it is and you have to take celebrities in the world that they--that they live in. And what one saw here was an almost unique conjunction of person and times and a person growing through time, so that I think, as Doris said, there was a story to it, which ended with something that was both magical and tragic at the same time.

JIM LEHRER: And, Tish, you made that same point too, that this tragic death--the fact that she died young--there are many people in history who died young--

JIM LEHRER: James Dean--Marilyn Monroe--John F. Kennedy--you mentioned him. Is this story of this princess going to be enhanced by the fact that she died young?

LETITIA BALDRIGE: Oh, I'm sure it will be. But, you know, as an observer of society and morals and the Princess Diana

way our whole world is going, she was beautiful, she walked with beauty, and she had good manners. And when you look at all the grunge around us, you look at the way people dress today, we're going into the next millennium, looking like we've never been taught anything, and we were losing our manners. I think she was a wonderful voice from the past, even though she was young and she represented today, I think she helped young women perhaps think about that too.

JIM LEHRER: What about the point that celebrities now have to be more open, they have to talk about their inner thoughts--

LETITIA BALDRIGE: They don't have to, but some of them do, and it's forgiven, it's welcomed. Twenty years ago, thirty years ago, people wouldn't have bought that at all. They would have said she's crazy to do that, to spill all of her emotions on a press interview to call people and have special makeup where her eyes are darkened with dark circles. But today that's true. Psychiatry is with us and everybody is writing articles and telling about their parents having done this and that to them. It's--we're all making confessions all over the place, so she fit right into that. That's the new age, the new spirit.

JIM LEHRER: Roger, the other part of this story, of course, which is unresolved as we speak, and who knows when it'll ever be resolved, but the public has already made a decision here, particularly in Britain, I believe, that the press contributed to the death of their princess. Does that reaction surprise you?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: No, it doesn't surprise me, or you, I imagine. The terrible thing about these paparazzi in a tunnel is that you could not have a more graphic image of the animalistic aspect of press inquiry. Fortunately, most of us not only don't behave that way but wouldn't even consider that as journalism. But it becomes lumped into the same--onto the same bin for condemnation by a public that, on the one hand, is looking for some vent of its sorrow and the other some way to vent its anger.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Do you agree with that, Elise O'Shaughnessy, that there's a double edge to this sword, somebody to blame but also some legitimate complaint?

ELISE O'SHAUGHNESSY: Yes. I think there is some legitimate complaint. I also think that as many Princess Diana

people have pointed out, she did use the press and that was how she vanquished the palace and the forces of darkness that were keeping her down. So it does need to be said that she in a sense played a dangerous game. And that's not to excuse the behavior of the stalkarazzi, as they're now being called because that--it is shocking and everybody does feel that that is no way to behave for anyone who is engaged in the business of journalism. It is ironic, though, that she was such a mistress of playing the game of the media.

JIM LEHRER: Michael Elliott, do you agree with my statement awhile ago, that at least the British public has already brought in a verdict on this one?

MICHAEL ELLIOTT: Yes, I think they have, but I think the verdict will bound to be shaded over the next few days, Jim. I mean, we've already had the news today about the driver's--the fact that the driver had been drinking earlier in the night, which of course doesn't exculpate anyone but, I mean, it's just another factor that will be added in. There's going to be an awful lot of overheated debate. France actually has Princess Diana

arguably the toughest privacy laws in Europe. I mean, if legislation was going to solve this problem, it would have solved it in France. And it plainly hasn't. I think there will be a degree of revulsion against the tactics of the paparazzi or some of them and some of the tabloids who employed them. But there is an apparently unsatiable demand for news and photographs of celebrities. That may dim. That demand may dim for a little while, but we live in an age, and here I think David Halberstam's comment is a posit--we live in an age where we enjoy learning about the innermost secrets of famous people, seeing them in private moments.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Probably not, although I do think it's been building gradually and this could Princess Diana

prove to be some sort of turning point and anger about unnecessary intrusions into the private lives of certain figures, and if the tabloid heads decide not to publish the pictures that somebody did get of Diana, that might seem a small turning point, even though the demand will still be there, there will still be paparazzi hoping to sell other photos, I doubt that those photos are going to see the light of day. I certainly hope not.

JIM LEHRER: A newspaper in Germany today published on the front page a photograph of the death scene there, with the bodies in the car. That was your understanding too, Elise?

ELISE O'SHAUGHNESSY: Yes. Yes. Immediately. I mean, these people obviously didn't even think twice, and that is shocking.

LETITIA BALDRIGE: I think all of this is going to help the coverage of the boys. I think the young princes will have some privacy. I don't think any of the paparazzi would dare step in and make them Princess Diana

frightened and chase them and hound them. I think they're going to hold back on Diana's children, at least I hope to heavens they will.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, we have to leave it there. Thank you, all five, for being with us tonight.

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REMEMBERING DIANA

September 1, 1997

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