Gossip: So Much Fun People Once Tried To Make It Illegal

I heard this on "The Morning Read" from the Wall Street Journal issue of 4 Jun 2007 and thought you'd enjoy it.

"When God created the heavens and the earth, he inflicted humanity with the presence of snakes and other slimy and oozy and pestiferous and odoriferous objects of loathing," opined a Texas newspaper in 1915. "And He also inflicted us with gossip, for what reason only He in His superior wisdom can tell."

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By today's standards, gossip in the first half of the twentieth century was pretty tame stuff: painting, padding or lacing. Women dyed their hair, lied about their age, or — the unkindest cut — chased men. Men's troubles were usually financial or marital.

Although most respected people frowned on gossip, an Associated Press reporter, Saul Pett, came to its defense: "If four old biddies sit on the front porch sipping lemonade and chewing up the neighborhood, why call that gossip? Why not call it news analysis? Aren't they like Walter Lippman and Ed Murrow, trying to understand the world around them?"

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I've had a mother and a husband who lectured and preached to me about gossip. Maybe that's why I so love a good tidbit here and there.

Legislators and local officials tried to outlaw gossip in the early twentieth century. What are we trying to outlaw today that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will giggle about a hundred years from now?

Made ya think, huh?