From supermarket tabloids, entertainment television programs and the Internet, gossiping has become a staple of our diet, seemingly as necessary as the “real” news. We live in a world of constant happenings that spark the topics of our gossip. The only difference between today and a few hundred years ago is that now gossip spreads like fire across a whole continent in the time it takes to simply strike the match.
The famous phrase we associate with the California Raisins was born around the late 1840’s during the first few years of the telegraph, invented by Samuel Morse. Electric telegraph lines spanned across America. With the urgency to create communication, they were built quickly and sometimes not very well, with wires crossing and dangling on poles and trees. This is what gave people the impression of a grapevine. Samuel Bowles, in the 1865 book “Across the Continent,” writes one of the first grapevine references. In one passage he remarked that women in Colorado appeared to have a secret method in learning the latest fashions from the East Coast. He writes, “How it is done I do not understand—there must be a subtle telegraph by crinoline wires; as the southern Negroes have what they call a grape-vine telegraph.” Later, the term “grapevine” became widely known during the Civil War. An excerpt from Major James Connolly’s diary reads, “We get such ‘news’ in the army by what we call ‘grape vine,’ that is, ‘grape vine telegraph.’ It is not at all reliable.” Think about the childhood game of telephone and you’ll get the same idea. After too many translations, what starts as “last month, I got a raise,” eventually translates to “fast mints stop the cheese.” GOSSIP. It’s everywhere. Some may even call it an epidemic. Myrtle Barker said, “The idea of strictly minding our own business is moldy rubbish. Who could be so selfish?” Here are a few forms of gossip that continually reel us in for the big catch.
CELEBRITY GOSSIP—Otherwise known as CWS (Celebrity Worship Syndrome). It causes people to find more sustenance in the possible location of Gwyneth’s yoga class, or the supposed wedding date of Bennifer, than in bread, water and oxygen. Watch out! It could happen to you! It’s no big surprise that according to a study by Magazine Publishers of America, six out of the top ten circulating magazines in 2003 were titles renowned for their juicy bits of gossip. A lot of magazines try to justify that readers are just trying to find a small escape from their stressed lives when they read celebrity gossip. What seems to be ignored is that habits of gossip indulgence aren’t often kept fenced up in “harmless” reading entertainment. It’s not just reading material that’s a problem. We have also become inundated with television shows dedicated to the sole exposure of lives of people with whom we will most likely never have any contact with on this planet. The sad thing is, these reporters give the impression they’re doing us a favor. “Coming up, we promise to give you the details of a stretch mark acquired during Courteney Cox’s pregnancy!” The high viewer ratings of these cookie-cutter shows seem to give the diagnosis that we are so tired of facing our own dull routines that in order to ease the monotony, it’s best to indulge in gossip of people with more exciting lives. Along with celebrity gossip, we are also tempted with the gossip generated by our local news reporters. We like to think of them as trustworthy sources of news, but more than half of their sentences start with the word “allegedly.” This is an admission that even they aren’t sure they’re reporting the truth. So what is the fun in speculating about innocent people anyway? It’s a possibility that this saturation of gossip in the media will have an effect on our gossiping habits in the home.
FAMILY GOSSIP—The family is often idealized as the most unbreakable and trustworthy of all human relationships. Since we are known very intimately in the family unit, sometimes the most hurtful gossip can be generated between family members. Some people may feel that the sharing of gossip between other family members creates closeness. Others use it to create distance. Especially when it comes to birth order, rumors can be created as a way to gain the upper hand in the battle of becoming the “favorite” child. The effects of this gossip can create a long-term wedge between siblings and parents. In more severe cases, marriages can fall apart with the start of a tiny rumor. A tragic example is that of Shakespeare’s Othello, whose doom was caused by the rumored whereabouts of a handkerchief. Little rumors can grow into big consequences.
OFFICE GOSSIP—Don’t bring your personal life to the office. It’s been said a hundred times by our bosses but somehow everyone forgoes this warning at the stereotypical water cooler. Think of the Dilbert cartoons and get a taste of how rumors of raises, pink slips and affairs can cause unnecessary tension in the workplace, forcing everyone who is a part of them to walk on broken glass until proven “guilty.” A local psychologist in Renton shares her top reasons for why people gossip: 1) people like to hear themselves talk; 2) when someone questions their own self worth, they start analyzing or talking about the worth of someone else; 3) gossip is a last resort when there is nothing intellectual to say; and, 4) people don’t think before they speak. Before you put your paycheck or office relationships on the line, you might want to consider if you fall under one of these categories.
This isn’t all to say that if you gossip, you are doomed but it couldn’t hurt for us to try and define the line between confiding in a friend and sharing news just to get a reaction. A Spanish proverb admonishes us, “whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.” Hundreds and thousands of years later this threat hasn’t stopped our hunger to be the first to pass the word. So, whether you hear it from a little bird or have been digging through the dirt yourself, it’s a sad possibility that gossip will continue to remain as big as the lies it often generates. With enough truth in serious issues that will really affect us, like war, presidential elections, and the nature of our taxes, why don’t we try to keep it real and cut the gossip? The last thing we need to worry about is a tangled knot of lies that need to keep up with the regularity of dirty laundry. Why waste more time speculating about the lives of others than fully living ourselves? Thumper from “Bambi” said it best, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.”
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