When You're Wealthy, You're an Eccentric...

Mohammed Al Fayed thinks that Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed were murdered. It's not a surprising belief from a grieving father, even over a decade later. Young lives cut tragically short—if I was in his place, I imagine I'd want there to have been more that led to these deaths than a series of random events. I'd need to blame someone. However, these reports from the NY Times and the BBC make me think that the owner of Harrod's department store has crossed far beyond the Great Divide between Sanity and Delusion and is homesteading way over in the Crackpot Territories.

I've indicated in an earlier post that I'm not much on conspiracy theories. I mean, the Bush administration continually reminds of me of the Oceania government in George Orwell's 1984 (and, in spite of myself, I can't help but think of Emmanuel Goldstein every time I hear a yet another Bush-ite invoke Bin Laden), but I don't think they're smart enough or powerful enough or really even competent enough to successfully execute any kind of grand conspiracy. If they were, we wouldn't know anything about Gitmo or warrantless wiretapping or waterboarding or Valerie Plame or Dick Cheney's shooting his friend in the face or... the list is so long, it boggles the mind. But the idea that Dodi and Diana were "executed" by British and French secret intelligence services with the assistance of the CIA... Sorry, buddy, I'm not buying it.

Now if he thought the Russians had managed it... that's a different story....