THE YEAR EMOTIONS RULED

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Along comes this painful and murky Boston murder trial, then, in which the truth of whatever happened on Feb. 4 was known only to the 19-year-old au pair and to eight-month-old Matthew Eappen, who was in her charge, and who is dead. The public thinks it sees injustice in the second-degree murder verdict the jury handed down. But then it thinks it sees injustice in the reversal by Judge Hiller Zobel, when he reduced the verdict to manslaughter and ordered no more jail time for Woodward. Adding to the frustration was the memory of O.J. and the question, never settled, of whether this year's civil-court decision to take away his money compensated society or heaven for what most people believe was an act of bloody murder.

Reality bites. Where was the cosmic fairness in this year's murder of Bill Cosby's son Ennis, a beloved young teacher? Did the June settlement by the states with the cigarette companies hit the bastards hard enough? What was happening in the never ending investigation of the crash of TWA Flight 800? Where is the justice for the killer(s) of JonBenet Ramsey, whose case seems to stew forever? Where is the justice for Pol Pot, the most odious mass murderer since Hitler and Stalin, who was brought into public view on videotape in a Khmer Rouge show trial. There he sat, still as death, watery eyes, age spots, every inch an ordinary old man, except in his vile soul. Where was the international tribunal to bring this subhuman low before the world? Or was it thought sufficient that he appeared on television?

And then came the death of Princess Di, the response to which was at once overwhelming and bewildering. Here was the loss of someone who was not a hero, a saint or a leader. Reduced to basics, hers was the life of a high-born girl, royally seduced and abandoned, who pleased the observing world by her beauty, gracefulness, kindness and weakness, and by an impressive amount of pluck. Yet when she died, it was as if the heart of everyone dropped in its cage.

In the weeks since her funeral there has been a visible collective effort to pull ourselves together. Among journalists, as soon as the first wave of admiring pieces had flattened out, a predictable second wave of hold-on-theres followed. The press had overreacted, said the press. The press had led and misled the public. There were so many more important stories to cover, said the press (as if that had not been the case during Iran-contra and the savings-and-loan frauds, when no princess had died). Behind all that was the embarrassing feeling that journalism had been swept up in a popular moment that it ought to have dissected or belittled, and so then it did, in an effort to cleanse itself of having dealt with the sort of news that makes reporters squirm--the news of feeling. Yet this is what the response to Diana's death was, and it might have been wiser to take it at face value.

It was said at the time that women especially identified with Diana, and that that accounted for the volume of the mourning. Every woman mistreated by a man--that is, every woman--could relate to moments in Diana's life that should have led to bliss and instead wound up in sorrow, humiliation and estrangement. Never mind that hers was a particular story wholly out of reach of common comprehension; it was easily translated to bad marriages and cold in-laws everywhere.