This is not some piddling campaign. It’s an elaborate Madison Avenue effort (complete with expensive subway, bus and TV ads) to change the zeitgeist and reclaim our lost virtue. A catalyst for what some theologians believe is a new “Great Awakening” of morality. A self-help program that aims to change your life with a couple of mouse clicks.
The “Chicken Soup for the Soul” guy (Jack Canfield) is aboard. So is the Mars-and-Venus man (John Gray), which is strange because I could have sworn that “inside skinny” was the language of choice on both planets. The idea is getting powerful backing from some extremely successful “viral marketing” experts, bent on product placement for Talmudic commandments. And the rabbis’ Web site, WordsCanHeal.org, is loaded with famous names from Tom Cruise to Tom Daschle who have taken “the pledge” to try to say something nice for a change.
Of course, this pledge is a little easier to sign than, say, the New Hampshire contract to refrain from tax increases on pain of political death. “I pledge to think more about the words I use” is easy enough, while “I will not become discouraged when I am unable to choose words perfectly” is a loophole big enough to fit the fat Elvis through. (Don’t worry. Gossip about the dead is called “history”).
Look at that one again. Those who sign the petition pledge that they won’t be “discouraged” when they fall off the wagon. How convenient. In other words, they get to pose before the world as opponents of gossip, but don’t have to feel bad when they gossip themselves.
Of course recent pledge signers like Barry Diller and Fran Drescher never gossip themselves. Wouldn’t think of it. Who can doubt that when they and all the others on the list get together with friends in the evening, they talk exclusively about the fine work being done by the Junior League in their communities and about how much all of the couples they know love each other?
The list of signatories to this noncommunicative communique makes for interesting reading. Newt Gingrich, John Kerry, Henry Cisneros, and Jeane Kirkpatrick all have been subjected to vicious gossip in the past (Sorry, can’t share). But Bob Dole? The Washington big mouths weren’t emasculating him behind his back at the Capitol Hill Club. That was Dole himself bragging to the world on national TV about erectile dysfunction. Whatever.
Maybe it was a moment of mental dysfunction. Celebrities get a lot of solicitations and sign a lot of things. At the same time there may actually be something interesting going on here. Bear with me for a moment. You can gossip later about my weakness for goofy panaceas.
Gossip has been around since Eve and the serpent noticed Adam was naked. Jane Austen trafficked in it. All of those wicked but true rumors about Thomas Jefferson and the slave girl Sally Hemings were spread and published at the time. (Gail Collins, the new editorial page editor of The New York Times, wrote a terrific book about the history of political gossip called “Scorpion Tongues”).
And of course, Hollywood has always depended on gossip to keep its stars in the public eye, which is why most savvy actors know that it’s just part of the territory. Are Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz really hooking up? The truth doesn’t much matter, because it’s the gossip that helps sell the movie.
That deal has been mutually beneficial in the entertainment business for generations. The industry gets juicy publicity; the public gets the privilege of seeing the rich and famous screw up their lives even worse than we do ourselves. Gossip is an antidote to hype, a democratic leveler, a populist perk.
The irony of celebrities complaining about it is that they love the juicy stuff more than most. When boldface names hang out with other boldface names (as they routinely do), the best way for them to feel secure in their mutual boldfaceness is to exchange good unpublished dirt about yet other well-known people out of earshot. It’s bonding glue for the ladders of success.
But at a certain point, the celebrity becomes a target of mean gossip, and then-if the person has any sense-his attitude changes some. John McCain, for instance, was a gossip hound, the juicier the better, until a series of false rumors helped George W. Bush beat him in the pivotal South Carolina primary. Now he signs the Words Can Heal pledge.
Something has indeed changed in the world of gossip since the days of Walter Winchell and Hedda Hopper (Hollywood gossip columnists who printed much meaner things than Liz Smith). Today’s gossip travels everywhere at once. For noncelebrities, e-mail and cell phones have increased the velocity of local dish. With speed comes quantity; when it’s easier to spread, you spread more of it. Which means more false gossip, because in my humble experience, roughly half (maybe one third) of rumors tend to be wrong or at least highly embellished.
Even when true, we’re ambivalent about gossip. It makes us binge and purge. We lap up everything about the sexual peccadilloes of politicians, then tell pollsters we don’t want to hear about it any more. We claim to value privacy, then vote for invasions of it with our remote controls.
For generations, much of reporting has been simply the confirmation of gossip-who said what to whom; who got mad at whom. Once it was nailed down, it ceased to be disreputable. The difference now is that unconfirmed, unimportant and often inaccurate reports leak much more frequently, crowding out the rest of the news, contributing to the national flight from seriousness. The catty comment once made across the back fence can now be heard in Kuala Lumpur.
As the rabbis know, they can’t win their battle. Stamping out gossip is like Prohibition or communism, doomed to failure as a crime against human nature. But just because you can’t end drinking doesn’t mean people can’t drink less. If plans proceed and 100,000 people sign the pledge, they may help make America a little nicer. And a little less fun.
