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=> Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer
Posted by Tiglath (Guest) - Saturday, July 28 2007, 3:34:06 (CEST)
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Australian anger as Greer attacks 'slow-witted and neurotic' Diana

By Kathy Marks in Sydney

Published: 28 July 2007

Germaine Greer's fellow Australians will be choking on their breakfast cereal this morning as they read her latest piece of invective: an excoriating attack on the late Diana, Princess of Wales, whom she describes as devious, neurotic and stupid. In an essay in today's Weekend Australian Magazine, the Melbourne-born author and academic claims that Diana was nicknamed Brian by her siblings after the slow-witted snail on The Magic Roundabout.

She also dismisses the notion that Diana was a fashion icon. "She dressed to the same demotic standard of elegance as TV anchorwomen do."

In the essay, written to coincide with the impending 10th anniversary of Diana's death, Ms Greer suggests she was partly responsible for her own untimely demise. "The saddest thought of all is that Diana's death may have resulted indirectly from another of her cack-handed manipulations; it is said that she only went to Paris with Dodi Fayed in order to make the heart surgeon Hasnat Khan jealous." Diana had a relationship with Dr Khan after her divorce from the Prince of Wales, and is said to have wanted to marry him.

Ms Greer, who has lived mostly in Britain for the past 40 years, is regarded as an embarrassing crackpot by many of her compatriots. They claim that her periodic withering critiques of Australia are based on an outdated, stereotypical image of her birthplace.

Ms Greer provoked outrage last year when she wrote a vindictive piece about Steve Irwin, the television naturalist and "Crocodile Hunter", shortly after he was killed by a stingray's barb.

Writing in the Guardian, she said of the exuberant, khaki-clad Irwin, who was regarded as a national treasure by many Australians: "There was no habitat, no matter how fragile or finely balanced, that Irwin hesitated to barge into, trumpeting his wonder and amazement to the skies.

"There was not an animal he was not prepared to manhandle. Every creature he brandished at the camera was in distress ... The animal world has finally taken its revenge."

Her attack on the late Princess of Wales is equally vitriolic. "Of the four Spencer children, Diana was the slowest. Because of her slowness, she was easily found out in her preposterous fibs," writes Ms Greer.

She also claims that Diana persuaded a younger schoolfriend to write a nasty letter to her father's second wife, Raine. "Apparently she didn't have the courage to write her own letter ... in adulthood Diana became more, rather than less devious. The same foolhardiness was at work not only in Diana's sexual adventures but also in her orchestration of her public persona."

Ms Greer also criticises Diana's charity work, accusing her of "rushing into too many situations in which genuine angels would have feared to tread".

She writes: "Her habit of popping up in the midst of other people's life crises must have startled some of her victims. Diana's legacy is no more than endless column inches of adulation and speculation."

Ms Greer, who shot to prominence in 1970 with her feminist bestseller, The Female Eunuch, has embraced environments as varied as Newnham College, Cambridge, where she was a fellow and lecturer, and the Celebrity Big Brother house. She was a Big Brother contestant in 2005, but walked out after five days, accusing the producers of psychological cruelty.

Previewed excerpts of her Diana essay were already inflaming passions yesterday. One visitor to the website of News Limited, which publishes The Australian, wrote: "Germaine, you have passed your use-by date and gone off. You need to be thrown in the rubbish bin."



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