by Jerome Maida jeromemaida@hotmail.com (570) 282-1388
For those who feel the cult of personality surrounding President Obama is annoying or even detrimental to the country, take heart. It could be worse.
He could have followers as rabidly fanatical as Princess Diana.
Twelve years after her tragic death, a group dedicated to preserving her memory is blasting a comic book on her life by Bluewater Comics.Bluewater's crime? According to Margaret Funnell, co-founder of the Diana Circle, a group dedicated to the Princess's memory, it's because the bio comic includes what her group feels are negative parts of Diana's life, including her divorce from Prince Charles and her tragic death. "It's disgusting", Funnell told the British press. "Their feeble excuse is that they wanted to show the young people of America her life. They could have done it with lovely stories. They didn't need to stoop to this."
“I find it quite cruel them showing the funeral", she continued. "Had she lived until she was 85 and had a lovely life, that would be different. This girl lost her life in her prime."
“Comic means something to laugh at. I don’t find it at all comical and I wish they hadn’t done it.", she added.
To which I can only say: Is she freaking kidding? How could anyone do a comprehensive bio of Diana in any medium and not talk about some of the struggles and obstacles in her life? Especially when Diana herself spoke about them?
The idea that the comic should have omitted her tragic death from it's pages is even more outrageous. Any accurate biography would at least mention the end of it - and we are talking about a death and funeral that was watched by millions around the world - and became possibly the most hyped funeral ever, thanks to people like Funnell, who treated the symbolic monarch as the most significant individual ever to walk the face of the Earth.
Funnell's outrage is especially ridiculous when one actually reads the comic and sees the images of Diana's death consist of exactly one panel showing the Paris tunnel where Diana suffered fatal injuries in an August 1997 car crash. That panel, it turns out, is a simple, neutral, daytime image of the tunnel -- no wreckage debris, no police tape, no emergency vehicles or anything of that sort. Additionally, the funeral shot is of mourners and is tastefully done. These are images of the sort that ran in newspaper photographs around the world."
That Diana fanatics like Funnell would be upset shows that they obviously have no idea that comics aren't just for children and are obsessed with Diana to a point that borders on the unhealthy - and then crosses that border. It's like they refuse to acknowledge her as a human being with flaws.
For example, in a 2007 interview, Funnell is quoted as saying,"I remember when I heard the news that she'd died, my whole world stopped." She and her group also may not be the best arbiters of taste; they routinely refer to the second wife of Prince Charles, Camilla Parker Bowles, as "Cowmilla," and at a Kensington Palace protest of the 2005 marriage of Charles and Parker Bowles, they made the classy decision to mock the bride with a photo of her face superimposed on a horse's body.
Class, thy name is Diana Circle!
"Anyone with half a brain who had a love for Diana will hate it,” says Funnell. Truer words were never spoken, Ms. Funnell. Truer words were never spoken. Half a brain, indeed.
