You know I’m old, right? Not super-old, but I’m definitely old enough to remember very specific details about Princess Diana and her death and the gigantic clusterf—k of blame, accusations and idiocy that followed that tragedy. I remember George Clooney coming out and blasting the hell out of the paparazzi/stalkarazzi culture. I remember for a brief moment, it seemed like the media was going to turn inward and have a frank discussion amongst itself about what was and was not appropriate. And I remember The Earl of Spencer, Diana’s brother, excoriating the press AND the monarchy for basically leaving his sister dangling in the wind post-divorce. I also remember how Diana managed her own press – at time brilliantly, and mostly to her advantage – and how SHE refused royal protection (because she correctly assumed her protection officers were selling information about her to the press). I also remember that Diana probably wouldn’t be dead today if Henri Paul hadn’t been drunk off his ass, or if Dodi Fayed hadn’t nonsensically wanted to leave the secure cocoon of the Hotel Ritz for his own apartment across town.
Basically, I remember a lot. I don’t go in for Diana conspiracy theories, but I will engage in the occasional “what ifs” of the circumstances of her death, and I try to be pragmatic about assigning blame. Was it the paparazzi’s fault? Partly. But it was also a drunk driver and a coked-up boyfriend and a princess who didn’t wear a seatbelt. It was also a royal protection service (and a royal staff system) that allowed payoffs and bribes for information, leading to well-earned mistrust and disloyalty, which left Diana feeling as if she could trust no one.
As I said… I’m old. Miley Cyrus is NOT old. Miley doesn’t know what the f—k she’s talking about. She decided to tweet out some nonsense about the paparazzo who was killed while photographing Justin Bieber’s car during a traffic stop. Miley tweeted this:
“Conscience” not “conscious”. And it’s not super-classy to just flat-out blame the paparazzo who thought it was super-cool to stand in the middle of the street talking photos (I’m not as angry at Miley for that one though). Mostly I’m just mad that Miley improperly invoked Diana’s death in a situation that doesn’t compare. And while you could make arguments for or against keeping a tighter rein on the paparazzi, Miley is definitely not the celebrity to make that case, you know?
Oh, and Justin Bieber issued a statement about the paparazzo’s death too, saying: “While I was not present nor directly involved with this tragic accident, my thoughts and prayers are with the family of the victim. Hopefully this tragedy will finally inspire meaningful legislation and whatever other necessary steps to protect the lives and safety of celebrities, police officers, innocent public bystanders, and the photographers themselves.” I still don’t really understand? There are already laws about traffic safety and all of that. Shouldn’t this be a call to ENFORCE existing laws?
Photos courtesy of WENN and Jlnphotography/wenn.
She’s not very old, and she’s not an intellectual, and we shouldn’t expect any sage advice from her.
And my spelling is better than hers, and I’m not even a native speaker.
@ Lucija:
My first thought, too. Even I spotted the “conscious/conscience” mistake while reading.
And your a child? Shouldn’t it be you’re a child? Dear God.
Age doesn’t always necessarily dictate intellect or the ability to give advice. Sometimes the wisest and simplest of advice can come from a child.
That being said, yes there are a lot of immature teenagers and young people these days, but there are also a lot of mature youth with a good head on their shoulders who are more than able to evaluate a situation and give advice.
It is sad that some people aren’t heard because they are young and assumed to have no clue what they are speaking about.
And what age are you KateLynne? I’m just curious.
Life experience is what gives us wisdom.
Intellect is what gives us intelligence.
They don’t always go hand-in-hand.
Miley is young, she has little in the way of life experience, therefore, she has little in the way of wisdom.
Evidently she’s not “the brightest bulb in the pack” either.
If children and teenagers aren’t given a voice on certain issues it’s because they don’t yet have the experience to comment in any meaningful way.
As for the “schmaltz” about wisdom coming from children … Oh, please!
If I’m being honest, I had no idea who princess Diana was. I knew she was the mother of those 2 prince’s, but that’s about it. I didn’t know how she died, and it doesn’t really interest me, but I feel no sympathy for the paparazzo that got killed. To his family and the driver, yes. Why would you give your life to take a picture of an ugly car with its even uglier owner not even in it?
Um, wow. Now I really feel old!
I remember where I was when I heard about Diana’s death (Burning Man, heh). I’m not a conspiracy theorist but the official explanation of how it went down has always seemed a bit dodgy to me, especially considering the mysterious disappearance of the security videos and other things that just didn’t add up amidst the flurry of fingerpointing. Not to mention the rug-sweeping.
The fact that Diana remained so immensely popular post-divorce was a serious thorn in the side of the palace; getting rid of her was also necessary if anyone would ever accept Camilla. So, I have always smelled a rat. Or rats.
OTOH the idea that one’s own grandmother or father had a hand in bumping off one’s mother is just way too awful to consider. I think Her Majesty’s Secret Service likely knew better than to involve HRH in it. But, at the end of the day, I still blame the palace for the entire thing.
Diana was as thick as two short planks.
She thought she could play the media to her own advantage, which, admittedly, she managed for a short while.
She was brought in as a “brood mare” to produce heirs to the throne and I don’t think anyone was fooled into thinking there was some great love match between her and Charles.
Let’s not forget that Diana was also unfaithful during the marriage (remember James Hewitt? Prince Harry looks more like him every day …)
Security tapes going missing – well, probably to try to protect the royal family from more embarrassment. Does anyone really believe that an air-head mannequin worried anyone enough that they’d arrange her death … seriously?!?!?
I’m pretty old too, it happened my birthday so all the coverage is forever burned in my brain. And while I get that it’s not super classy to blame the JB pap, who else is there to blame? Yeah, you could blame the mags for buying the shot, and then the public for consumption but really it boils down to the pap taking it upon themselves to stand in the street to get the shot, it’s personal responsibility. I’m not trying to be callous because I feel for the family left behind, but you learn as a child the dangers of playing in the street. As an adult, you damn well know better.
Completely agree with everything you said, Marie.
I find Biebs unbearable but it’s really hard for me to have a lot of sympathy for this pap. Call it a paparazzi job hazard or whatever you want-the competitive demand and subsequent pay-out for candid celeb photos is ridiculous on so many levels and inevitably leads to dangerous situations like this.
I don’t need to see Bieber driving in his fancy car nor do I need to see Britney Spears pumping gas. I read this blog for the clever writing but I’d be fine making fun of celebs just based on red carpet photos.
I empathize with the family but this guy made an idiotic decision in order to try to score a few cool mill. At the end of the day this is a case of stupidity motivated by greed.
Well said. I totally agree.
Me, too.
I don’t really blame Miley for being silly.. it does sort of need to be addressed? It is getting worse and worse and people think it is okay?
I remember reading an interview with (I think?) Sienna Miller where she was saying how terrified she was when she was younger by the paparazzi. In any normal circumstances, grown men following young women around (often down dark alleys) would be grounds for police interference but you put a camera in their hands and it is fine because it’s “just their job”?
I know this story is not about young celebrities being scared of stalker paparazzi but ya know… all in the same theme…
The rules around what they can and cannot do should be very cut and dry and leave no room for interpretation
Hahah sorry – I’m aware the above has nearly no bearing on this story.
Ignore me!
Jennifer Lawrence talked in an interview about how she always thought paparazzi would be annoying, but when they started following her she found that it was more than that – it was scary. She knew they meant no harm, that it was just a job, but 20 years of conditioning as a woman to think that strange men following you must have really nasty intentions mean it’s hardwired to be very, very scared of it. She hadn’t expected to find it as threatening as it feels.
I don’t know. I think celebrity’s kids, at least, should be off limits. But I’m a raging hypocrite, because I look at the photos. I remember when Diana died and everyone was so outraged and hating the paps, and I couldn’t help thinking that was a bit convenient. We all liked looking at the photos, which created the market in the first place.
Like the US needs more regulations from the government telling you how to abide by the already existing laws? Justin have you ever read just an index in a Carl Marx book? That’s socialism, stupid punk. And I won’t even get started with Shitty Cyrus…I can’t with these entitled yet ignorant crop of lucky punks.
It’s Karl not Carl. The next time you spout off about an economic theory try to get the economist’s name correct
This idiot.
*These* idiots.
Bieber and Miley need to go back to school, maybe do a bit of growing up.
I remember Diana very well: courtesy of my mum who is a HUGE Diana-looney.
Miley doesn’t know what she is talking about with this comparison.
Miley is followed everywhere by the paparazzi every single day. So she knows first hand what is like to be stalked all the time. I do not blame Miley for thinking the way she does about this incident. Put yourselves in her shoes for one month and then tell me if you are going to feel sorry for people who want to invade your privacy.
“Miley *calls* the paparazzi every single day”
Fixed it for you 🙂
You don’t get that many pictures coming out of the gym unless you want to be seen.
If Miley calls the paparazzi every day so they can photograph her, then she is a hypocrite! You can’t have it both ways.
Precisely!
The girl’s been out of work for a long time now, so expect more attention seeking behaviour to come.
This is why I’m always ambivalent when celebs whine about papparazzi. On one hand, I’m a very private person, and I can’t even imagine the horror of being followed 24/7, having every move photographed, sold, and dissected. The total lack of privacy honestly wouldn’t make any amount of wealth or fame worthwhile for me. So, I can sympathize up to a point.
But on the other hand, one hears about celebrities (like Miley, apparently) actually colluding with photographers to publish pictures, and my reaction is to tell celebs to shut up. You can’t wake a sleeping bear and then get angry when you can’t control him.
THANK YOU AMELIA : I was JUST stroking out coming to say
“Paparazzi calling Butters looking Bitch, Please!! Everyone knows YOU call your own press”
If I was in Miley Cyrus’ shoes I’d delete my Twitter account, rejoice that my career as Disney slave was over and spend all day humping Liam Hemsworth dry on a mattress stuffed with $100 bills whilst thanking the good lord G*d that talent is no longer a necessary part of the process.
It’s always the biggest media wh*res that complain most about the paps, isn’t it?
“If I was in Miley Cyrus’ shoes I’d delete my Twitter account, rejoice that my career as Disney slave was over and spend all day humping Liam Hemsworth dry on a mattress stuffed with $100 bills whilst thanking the good lord G*d that talent is no longer a necessary part of the process.”
Probably the best comment on CB, ever.
+1. Co-sign. *slow clap* And whatever else people are saying these days to mean they agree.
If that ever happens it will surely be a Party in the US-A
lmao
Another layer of blame in the Diana tragedy: the incredibly bad emergency medical care that she received. They waited almost an hour to transport her (some sort of “stabilization” policy) when in fact she had massive internal bleeding and died on the way to the hospital. If the same accident had happened in the U.S., Diana would almost certainly have lived. (My source for all this is Tina Brown’s excellent Diana biography.)
The Royal Family made the decision not to sue because it was going to be a lot of bad publicity, they didn’t need the money, and it wouldn’t bring Diana back anyways.
But there was a lot of fault on the part of the incompetent emergency medical providers, and the poor quality of care that she received. RIP Diana.
I love that Tina Brown bio – and I think Brown laid the blame on the correct people too.
Good lord… what a ridiculous statement.
Do you know anything about medical training in the US or UK?
US specialists receive less training than doctors from the UK (by several years).
It is ridiculous so say things like ‘this wouldn’t have happened here’ because you have ZERO IDEA of what actually went down
Chris Diana died in Paris.
um…diana’s pulmonary artery was punctured. people don’t survive that when they’re in the hospital, let alone in a car. to save someone with a punctured pulmonary artery you have to crack the chest open in a manner of seconds. don’t care if you’re in the U.S., the U.K, or Senegal, 99% of people aren’t going to survive that
Um, seconds? Diana lived for an hour after the crash – and that was with no in-hospital medical care. The damage to the artery was a pinprick, which is why she lived for so long.
If they had gotten Diana to the ED in ten minutes instead of sixty minutes, she could have been rushed into emergency surgery and survived. Nothing is ever certain of course, but chances are very, very good that if Diana had gotten into that same accident in a large city in the U.S., she would have survived.
Again, I highly recommend The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown – it’s a great read and very informative as well.
My understanding of Diana’s fatal wound is it was the same type of wound that Ronald Reagan survived, as he was whisked to the hospital immediately.
This is literally our social media’s fault. We weren’t aware of the vast stupidity of ourselves until we could tweet and update it EVERY FIVE SECONDS.
Beiber stated that this would happen. That’s more relevant and interesting. He was pulled (sometime in the last 8 months) over for driving over 100mph. He was complaining about the paps being “allowed” to pursue him and using it to try to get the police to NOT issue a ticket to him. Does anyone recall that incident?
Diana mention: IF a pap really caused Diana and Dodi’s fatal ‘accident’……… o_O I believe elsewise. I’m old and remember it all vividly. It’s better not to bring stuff like (conspiracy theory) that up. It exposes stupidity and a lack of diplomacy and decorum.
A man died because he was foolish and made a very poor decision. I’m still trying to figure out how to view his death so that he is a victim.
He put his life in danger to take pictures of a freaking car, worse yet he made some poor driver the cause of his death.
Forget celebs, paparazzi put regular people in danger all the time all in the interest of getting a picture. I often think if the Diana situation had happened in this country perhaps there would have been a greater move to curb this silly beast the relationship between celebs and paps has grown to. Not because I think America is amazingly effective, but because they tend to only try to handle issues when there’s significant media coverage and a death.
When you have people like goop and Chris Martin complain about privacy then stage their own pap ‘capture’ (learning of being pregnant w/ apple) so they could control the coverage, it should be obvious that even the most ‘private’ and ‘classy’ celebrities are often complicit in all this nonsense -The LAST people to complain are the ones that do it ALL the time. Miley.
Unfortunately for goop the pap they made the arrangement with spilled the beans later, maybe because she continually railed against the paps and even called event photogs ‘roaches’. Their decision to never be pictured together seems like a ploy to have paps seek them out more rabidly. Once they realized hardly anyone cared about them they are now fine being papped, with their children, even put the children onstage at a concert. How is that being private?
Dear celebutards, when you are complicit in what you are complaining about, nobody is going to take you seriously.
There are tons of celebrities that manage to not be stalked that actually warrant the attention (talented and not overexposed); they have children they spend time with in public and still manage to be private. When you sell your soul for ‘celebrity’ instead of being talented you are asking for it.
Unfortunately someone died and there is an innocent person that will have PTSD because they were minding their own business driving down the road. That person is suffering. It is all pitiful.
Sorry for rant.
The whole system is weird
She doesn’t even sound sorry about his death. I get that the paps can invade their privacy sometimes, but how about you show respect for his family and friends.
I also remember Princess Di’s accident and how it was covered and how shocked we were when we found out.
With that, I think we all agree that everyone is at fault with regards on how prowling the paparazzi are. The media, the celebrities, the papz themselves… I think some celebs handle it very well, some just don’t have any idea what to do with them, some are just plain happy that they are getting coverage…. regardless, there should be some strict laws especially with children involved. It is really quite futile to ban or totally restrict them because that will only make them more aggressive.
I’ve seen celebs that would make calm pleas or requests to the papz to give them space and frankly most of them will. If you flip out at them, that’s when they will be more than happy to provoke you and get some tabloid cover-worthy shots.
It’s a whole new ballgame now. It’s not going to be easy to get rid of them.
There’s an overwhelming demand for it and papz are just willing to provide the supply…
Take the camera out of his hand and what do you have? A man that was killed by being hit by a car in the street. It’s sad when someone loses their life in a way that could have been avoided.
Shucks. That’s just Miley bein’ Miley, ya’ll.
seriously, i never understand how more people don’t mention the fact that diana wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Her image should be the face of seatbelt laws- one person survived that crash, and he was the only one wearing a seatbelt! so just effing wear them already! and miley should just shut her face. it’s like when kristen stewart said getting papped was like rape- NO IT’S NOT
These kids make me ill.
Miley Twitted about paparazzi and other stuff that we (Unfamou)s people don’t care about at all…
I love Bieber trying to be smart. Yes, we should have laws on the book. It should be against the law for people to jump into traffic. Why aren’t police officers physically holding everyone down. I say, one police officer per person, just follow you around, and if you decide to cross the road at the wrong time they grab your hand and tell you NO!
This was a freak accident and a million happen every day. Tragic but that’s life. The only discussion you could have is maybe about banning photos of celebrities and kill the whole industry. Then again … we are all on this website … so …
Kaiser, I don’t always agree with you, but on this issue, you are spot on. I too remember when Diana died and the circumstances. Diana’s death was not a black and white issue like Miley (and other very young people for that matter) seem to think, it was a many shades of gray issue with blame, not just the paps. One cannot discount that the driver of the car was drunk and going 90mph in a tunnel and Diana’s BF apparently thought it was a swell idea they all get in that car with him. You right about how Diana sometimes courted the paps to her advantage. That type of thing is hard to turn on and off like a light switch. Miley Cyrus who is known to call paps, should just STFU. If it were not for paps, she would be nothing. If they don’t pay attention to her, she will make her own publicity by posting half naked pics of her on twitter or jumping on some other group of peoples bandwagon like gay rights for her own publicity. She is doing this now, using a guy’s death for her own publicity. She should be ashamed. I wish the paps and all others in the media quit giving this no talent twit any attention from here on out. She has very little talent, she will go away if that were to happen.
I don’t believe a WORD of the official reports about Diana’s death. The photo recently shown of her in the car after the crash has ZERO blood and she is in her seat. If she was not wearing a seatbelt it would have been a different scene entirely.
I am saying this because the Lamestream Media tends to have a story to tell that is usually completely divergent from actual fact. There are reasons for this.
Justin Bieber is yet another little performing cockroach who allows the world to watch him so we have our attention focused elsewhere.
That stalkerazzi did something incredibly stupid and died. Darwin Award candidate.
Will somebody please give this girl a job so we don’t have to put up with her ridiculous twittering or whatever every day. Give her something constructive to do or something. Just don’t hire her to sing “rebel yell” please. Whoever came up with that brainstorm should be banned from show business forever
Hmmm…a twenty year old who can’t spell, let alone choose her words carefully. She doesn’t even know what she’s talking about.
I remember the Lady Di incident, and I do not get the backlash to her statement. I get what she means to say, but she is obviously not the brightest person in the world.
One of the first things you are taught: Never chase a ball (or d-ck, in this case) out into the street. Beep mutha fuggin beep.
I’ve also never been enlightened on the death of Princess Diana growing up. After reading this article and everyone’s comments it seems as though there was a lot of confusion and a blame finger that could be pointed to anyone. I don’t want to make harsh statements against Justin or Miley because they are just stating what they believe to be correct responses to what occurred, although I see there are plenty of people here that disagree with what they think. But ya know, there are basic truths to what they have stated. Yeah celebrities want and need attention from the paparrazi to stay current but there are limits that need to be made clear time and time again when it comes to their “job.” Obviously, there are celebrities that are plain frightened by the paparrazi and their looming cameras; shouldn’t that be a call to action in it self?