Pretty much everybody on the planet knew of Princess Diana, and everybody knew when she died. Many people looked at her life to find meaning in her death. As it happened, I had just finished reading George Orwell's book "1984". With this fresh in my mind I saw her death in a different light.

As you might know from reading some of my other pages, I have been trying to develop a better government and better rules for society. I was concerned that people might accuse me of being too Orwellian. That some of my ideas would be too much like "Big Brother". As with most people, I came away from high school thinking that the big bad thing about "1984" was that you were watched all the time. After re-reading the book I found that being watched all the time was not that big a deal. The vast majority of the people in "1984" , the proles, were not really watched all that closely. It was mostly the outer party, lower government workers, who were watched all the time.

I found the big "evil" in "1984" to be how the government was in complete control of all the information and it's dissemination. They controlled the media completely, without restriction. Fortunately we have laws guaranteeing freedom of the press. Unfortunately we have failed to put any restrictions on them. The press, especially the tabloids, have become like "Big Brother".

How does this apply to Princess Diana? It was through all the commotion after her death that I saw how much her life resembled Winston's life. She too was watched all of the time. Her every word was listened to and scrutinized. Was it any harder for her to get some privacy than it was for Winston? She would think that she had evaded prying eyes only to find that someone had a powerful camera on her after all.

This has lead me to other comparisons. The Outer Party is what we call celebrities, government and business people. The Inner Party consists of all the reporters and other members of the press. Big Brother can even be seen to be the top executives of the media outlets. And us commoners, we are just the proles. Newspeak is just politically correct. We all see what happens when a member of the Outer Party does not use Newspeak. The press crucifies them until they repent. This could also be called a thought crime.

The most horrifying thing that I saw surrounding Princess Diana's death was that of mass emotion. Near the end of "1984" we see the great war instantly switched from being with Eurasia to being with Eastasia. The people's hatred instantly turned from one to the other. While it was not instantaneous, the media certainly turned the public's hatred of them into hatred of the Royals for not flying a flag at half-mast where a flag has never before flown at half-mast quite quickly.

Fortunately for us, the press cannot do a recall and rewrite of an event. The original will exist and can be used against them. This does not mean that they cannot create news. I still wonder what would have happened if the press did not badger Jean Charet about becoming leader of the Quebec Liberals. If they would have accepted his original "no" and left him alone, would he have changed his mind? Or how about Ken Starr. Would he have gone after Bill Clinton as ruthlessly as he did if the media would have listened to the polls, polls that said the American people did not care what Clinton did. In preventing the government from abusing the use of the media we may have swung the pendulum too far. We have given the press control over itself. While everybody is watching the government for signs of "Big Brother", we have let him in through the back door without even realizing.