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the great di turnaround
Hard as it is to believe, there remains among all the Diana madness one remarkable, overlooked story.
Remember how the Diana week started? With an outpouring of popular anger against the paparazzi and the press (for pursuing Diana). And remember how the week ended? With an outpouring of popular anger against the Queen and the royal family (for not sufficiently mourning Diana).
The fascinating story is what happened in between to turn popular anger so swiftly from one target to another. It is the story of one of the greatest acts of misdirection since Houdini--pulled off, amazingly enough, by the very tabloids that were originally so under siege.
Under siege, that is, in the days immediately after Diana`s death. By Thursday, however, the tabloids had changed the subject. WHERE IS OUR QUEEN? demanded the Sun. YOUR PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING. SPEAK TO US, MA`AM, pleaded the Mirror.
Us? Hours after Diana`s death, a sobbing woman outside Kensington Palace shouted, "You`re horrible!" at TV cameramen. A man-on-the-street interview by some hapless reporter yielded, "You people still at it? Why don`t you just p___ off?" At the beginning, it was us vs. you: us, the decent public; you, the murderous scum known as the press.
By midweek, in a move whose cynical brilliance merits a special Pulitzer for ass-saving improvisation, those very same tabloids were screaming SHOW US YOU CARE. Us: the grieving press and public. You: those cold and callous Windsors.
And it worked. The easy explanation is that when it turned out the limo driver was drunk, the public`s anger at the press declined. Yes, but the anger could then just have dissipated. The tabloids were not about to let that happen. Sensing a turn in public mood, they fed and amplified it mercilessly--and with such success that by the end of the week, on the eve of Diana`s funeral, the mob roared and the Queen caved.
She took to the airwaves--what else?--to assure her flock that she too had joined the national wallow, albeit in her own private Windsor way. She begged their indulgence as she too tried--here she reached for the supreme code word of touchy-feely self-pity--to "cope." This performance was not exactly Henry II having himself ostentatiously flogged for causing the death of Thomas Becket. But it was, in its own bloodless way, mortifying--as the Queen`s frenzied subjects meant it to be.
It is depressing to see an entire public so easily led by the nose. But it could have been worse. The marshaling of mass anger is an ancient art and, in even more cynical and calculating hands, a deadly one. In our lifetime it has been used to make the mob bay not for the tears of the Windsors but for the blood of the Hutu or the Jew.
We should be grateful, I suppose, that today`s herd is stampeded toward the bathetic rather than the barbaric. But the ease with which that can be done is deeply troubling. For some, it brings into question the very basis of democratic governance. Democracy, after all, assumes a people capable of independence of mind, of some intellectual and emotional resistance. One doubts the very existence of that capacity after witnessing a media-fed mass hysteria.

Like the great Di turnaround. Or, at a more serious level, the great antinuclear hysteria of the early `80s. It was launched by a book (The Fate of the Earth) fanned by saturation press coverage and brought to fever pitch by a TV movie (The Day After) that had schools offering psychological counseling for kids traumatized by watching it. Then it passed like a summer storm, leaving a dazed, glazed public wondering what exactly had happened. The recent Di madness was that same media-orchestrated phenomenon in microcosm, compacted in time and lightened in content.
And yet democracy survives--not just survives but flourishes. Indeed, in the past quarter-century it has achieved in the West a degree of stability and tranquillity rarely seen in history. How? Here lies the greatest irony: it is the very tranquilizing, mesmerizing effect of a media-saturated culture that is the ultimate source of contemporary political stability.
Political scientists often look elsewhere for explanations: to the structures of government or to the economic prosperity produced by capitalism. What they miss is the role of mass culture. Until the past few decades, history had never seen a world so dominated by media. The average household stares into a glowing box six hours a day. A democratic public so enthralled by Di`s dresses, by Ellen`s sexual orientation, by Jackie`s everything has little time or energy for a strike or a riot, let alone a war.
The public`s surrender of its sensibilities and concerns to mass media was never more evident than during the Diana convulsion. It was embarrassing. Yet thralldom has its compensations. It hardly makes for an exalted existence, but it does make communal life cozy and tame, safe for the psychic pleasures of mass frenzy and wallow.

die Frage zu dem Text ist: Explain in detail what is meant by the great di turnaround
ich hab mir zwar den text zwar übersetzt finde aber keine anwort
ansätze würden mir sehr helfen
danke
GAST stellte diese Frage am 09.12.2007 - 16:45





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