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Gossip As A Gauge Of A Religion's Commitment To Reality

Every religion (and every moral system) of which I am aware condemns gossip. None do it in as minute detail as Judaism.

It has generally been taken for granted by elevated individuals that gossip is bad.

In 2007, Dennis Prager passionately opposed outing the names of the DC madam's clients. Why ruin their lives over something so trivial?

Gossip undoubtedly destroys friendships, marriages, business partnerships and sometimes causes people to kill themselves and others, but much of the time, the damage that is blamed on gossip more rightly belongs on people who have acted badly. Such people often blame gossip for holding them accountable for their behavior.

If a man cheats on his wife, sometimes it is wrong to gossip about it and sometimes it is right. It depends on the circumstance. Sometimes it would be better for the wife to be informed and sometimes it would not.

Gossip is as bad as water. Sometimes water can save a life and sometimes water can kill.

As Dennis Prager says, ethics are both situational and absolute. The context determines the moral absolute. Sometimes it is right to lie ("Where are you hiding the Jews?") and right to kill (such as the Nazis during World War II).

There's no escape from making moral judgments and deciding when to speak and when to keep silent, when to act and when to hold back.

ABC News, August 17, 2005:

"If we listen we can learn what people find offensive or what people find acceptable, what they don't find acceptable," says Dr. Sarah Wert, a research psychologist. "So to that extent, it's a way to learn how to be a better social actor."

...The accuracy of the gossip may not matter as much as how often you engage in it. "Gossip humanizes people," Froelich said. "And when people on the street can be like, 'oh, she's rich, she's beautiful, she's famous, she seems to have everything, but oh wait, her fiancé cheated on her too, hmmm …'"

Orthodox rabbi and historian Dr. Marc B. Shapiro said in a 2008 lecture for Torah in Motion on "The Lives of the Gedolim":

"If you read my blogs, you'll see that I am a relentless exposer of the fraudulence not just in the chareidi world but in the Modern Orthodox world. It all needs to be exposed. But that doesn't mean that every simple person needs to know... As Rav Kook says, if they come into our world and try to affect us with their fraudulent stories, it needs to be exposed. But if they want to live by these bubbemeisers (old wives tales), that's a way of life. I'm like Rabbi Slifkin in this regard. Only if it threatens to interfere in the wider community.

"It's hard to know what lashon hara (gossip) is. You don't really know what lashon hara is. I have read many letters of gedolim and they are full of negative comments about other rabbis, which you would say is lashon hara. As anyone knows, they badmouth them all the time. If you asked the rav, he would say it is not lashon hara. The Torah says you have to expose chanafim (hypocrites, flatterers).

("The admonition to expose hypocrites is stated in Yoma 86b where it is derived from [the legal category of] Chillul HaShem," emails Marc in reply to my question.)

"We are supposed to expose hypocrisy. I would say that if you asked all these rabbonim who say terrible things about other ones and were great talmidei chachamim, if you asked them, they would say it is not lashon hara, but he's a fraud and I have to expose him. It could be that he's not a fraud and that it's just a personal dispute.

"I don't think it's lashon hara to talk about a dispute that the whole world knew about and it was in all the newspapers... If a certain rav did a bad thing. There's a rav, not a gadol of the first calibre but of the second calibre, but he had a child out of wedlock when he was about 17 and in yeshiva. About 20 years ago, one of the Israeli newspapers exposed him and published the birth certificate. I think that's a terrible breach of privacy. He made a mistake when he was young. I don't think it's anyone's business. I would never expose something like that. If I knew about it, I would probably choose not to write about him because how could you write about him and not talk about it?

"If there was a case like this where he abandoned the girl and wanted nothing to do with them and then he became a big scholar, a Talmud Chacham, a posek, I don't think that's lashon hara. This would be an example of exposing the hypocrites."

"I try to balance Jewish values with secular values. As a secular historian, you go into a grave and dig up the body if you need to. They dug up Zachary Taylor's body to see if he was poisoned. I would have no problem as a secular historian if I was writing about a figure like Einstein, but among gedolim, I do not do that. I can honestly say that I've never had to make that choice with Rabbi Yaakov Jechiel Weinberg. I would rather not write about somebody than have to cover something like that up... Certain great rabbinic figures, I would treat differently than other figures. If that is not in correspondence with historical [analysis], what are they going to do? Take my tenure away? Life is not only about historical craft."

Various rabbis made fun of the book Chofetz Chaim. The Chazon Ish is said to have made fun of the Chofetz Chaim book on gossip. "Even if these stories are not accurate, that they are told in the yeshiva world shows that this is an ethos that great rabbis shared." Chazon Ish said the Chofetz Chaim did not know what he was talking about in this book. According to his critics, the Chofetz Chaim created halacha (Jewish law) out of mussar (ethical exhortations, frequently extreme). That he took aggadic (stories) things and turned them into halacha. That he took ethical statements and turned them into Jewish law.

"I don't know today if anyone would have the courage to say something like that [to make these criticisms of the Chofetz Chaim book]."

According to the Chofetz Chaim, no gossip is permitted, even between husband and wife. Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach thought differently. Today, the Chofetz Chaim is the last word in these matters and that Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach would have the temerity to tell yeshiva students that they don't have to listen to the Chofetz Chaim, that's a bit difficult in the yeshiva world today and so they removed it [from a haredi publication of Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach].

According to Rabbi Jacob Emden, you could say Lashon Hara (gossip) about anyone who was your enemy. I guess this is a justification for all the Lashon Hara he tells in his own books. There are all sorts of heterim (permissions) for Lashon Hara. The Meiri says that if you say it publicly, it is not Lashon Hara. There are all sorts of views out there by great rabbis. Then the Chofetz Chaim codified Judaism's teachings on gossip and made it appear as though Judaism had a universal prohibition on speaking ill of others. If you read the writings of the great rabbis, almost all of these gadolim violate the laws of the Chofetz Chaim (Desiring Life). Of course, these great rabbis do not think they are saying Lashon Hara. They believe the target of their enmity deserves it. If their target is doing bad things, then they deserve. It's depressing. For many of these rabbis, it's just a personal weakness.

New York Times: Have You Heard? Gossip Turns Out to Serve a Purpose

Given this protective group function, gossiping too little may be at least as risky as gossiping too much, some psychologists say. After all, scuttlebutt is the most highly valued social currency there is. While humor and story telling can warm any occasion, a good scoop spreads through a room like an illicit and irresistible drug, passed along in nods and crooked smiles, in discreet walks out to the balcony, the corridor, the powder room.

Knowing that your boss is cheating on his wife, or that a sister-in-law has a drinking problem or a rival has benefited from a secret trust fund may be enormously important, and in many cases change a person's behavior for the better.

"We all know people who are not calibrated to the social world at all, who if they participated in gossip sessions would learn a whole lot of stuff they need to know and can't learn anywhere else, like how reliable people are, how trustworthy," said Sarah Wert, a psychologist at Yale. "Not participating in gossip at some level can be unhealthy, and abnormal."

Unless you acknowledge the powerful good that gossip can give, you are not confronting the issue. Almost all religious texts I've read about gossip, including the best (such as by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin), give short shrift to the moral necessity of much gossip (which protects the innocent from predators). By so doing, religion ignores reality and impedes progress towards a better world.

The primary reason gossip has a bad name (in secular or religious life) is that the benefits of gossip are diffused among many people (though they are better informed, they have little incentive to speak up for the value of gossip) while the price of gossip is concentrated on individual subjects who have a huge incentive to tamp it down.

Let me give an example. Let's suppose a rabbi is so physically affectionate (not that he's a predator) that he makes some people he hugs uncomfortable.

Gossip about this hugging rabbi protects those who would not like to hugged by the rabbi.

The rabbi could take this gossip as a form of reproof and reform his ways, but his most likely reaction would be to feel angry and protest vigorously that he's done nothing wrong, and that this gossip is evil because it humiliates him unnecessarily.

The English word "gossip" originated as "godsibb," meaning "a person related to one in God," or a godparent. Until the 1800s, "gossip" denoted friendship. Today gossip is defined by the dictionary as "chatty talk; the reporting of sensational or intimate information."

"If people aren't talking about other people, it's a signal that something is wrong - that we feel socially alienated or indifferent," says Ralph Rosnow, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Temple University and coauthor of Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay.

"For a real understanding of our social environment, gossip is essential," agrees Jack Levin, Ph.D., professor of sociology and criminology at Boston's Northeastern University and coauthor of Gossip: The Inside Scoop. "It's primary function is to help us make social comparisons. For example, if we read bad news about celebrities in the tabloids, or get into the gruesome details of our neighbor's misery over a cup of coffee, our own problems begin to pale in comparison."

Many people may gain from being gossiped about. Targets of gossip are made more human, more easy to identify with.

Gossip is a way for people to let you know, without confrontation, the limits on personal behavior. "If you move into a community and your neighbor tells you how the previous homeowner never disposed of his garbage properly, his gossip is letting you in on something else.

"Gossip shepherds the herd. It says: these are the boundaries and you're crossing them. You're not abiding by the rules and you'd better get back in step," says Rosnow.

"If you want to know about the kind of insurance coverage your employer offers, look in the company handbook," says Levin. "But if you want to know who to avoid, who the boss loves or loathes, who to go to when you need help, what it really takes to get a promotion or raise, and how much you can safely slack off, you're better off paying attention to the company grapevine."

Gossip tells you who's in. If you're worth being talked about, you're in. If you've got valuable information, you're in.

Kids' gossip is more innocent and cruel than that of adults. "Cruel comments, but effective ones," says Levin, "because the target learns some important information. Namely, that he is not invisible to the rest of the world. The result? This vital piece of information [badly dressed, a cheater or whatever] helps him see he needs to change his offensive behavior."

Women gossip more than men. Women talk about people in their lives while men engage in "shop talk," which revolves around work, sports stars, politicians…

"Gossip is similar to a Rorschach test," says Levin. "If you look at the nature of someone's gossip, you can find out what concerns them."

"We found that people who gossip the most rank highest on the anxiety scale," says Rosnow. "Not only do they disclose more, but the anxious are on the receiving end of gossip more often and are more likely than those less anxious to consider information crucial."

Dr. Gary Allen Fine says "we gossip about people we care about. We don't bother talking about people who don't matter to us."

Most of the time, the gossip spread between two people about a third absent friend is neutral news: a pregnancy, a promotion. But betraying a confidence, spreading sensitive information like an adulterous affair, can end a friendship.

When Dr. Rosnow asked subjects who they "liked," he found gossipees - the people being talked about - were usually not the most popular, essentially because they're different and don't conform. But the people engaging in gossip weren't particularly popular either because of their untrustworthiness.

Gossip is always about people, involving either fact or supposition. Rumors may or may not involve people but are always speculative. Rosnow says rumors deal with people's anxieties. There are two types: wish rumors that we hope are true, and dread rumors that we pray are false.

"Rumors are an echo of ourselves," says Dr. Jean-Noel Kapferer. "They reveal the desires, fears, and obsessions of a society."

In an essay in the New Republic, Nicholas Lemann writes: "Gossip is an appurtenance of a striving, socially unified society. It's worth watching as a barometer of our aspirations. As the middle classes obtain for themselves the glamrous, turbulent lives of the rich and famous, there is real danger that gossip as we know it could whither away. We could return to the status quo, ante-Society in which nobody's personal life was considered to be nationally riveting.

"The truth is, the proper time to become alarmed about the role of gossip in American Society is when there starts to be less of it."

© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 31 July 1998, This Is London:

Old-fashioned gossip is not only about dishing the dirt - it is essential to survival, according to an academic study today. Any employer who wants a happy and efficient company should let office gossip continue rather than try to stamp it out, the report claimed.

It revealed that the need to gossip and spread rumours is an instinct modern humans have kept since the Stone Age.

In those days it was vital to swap information on where the food was and to let others know who was the chief hunter, and so on. Today it is not that much different says Nigel Nicholson, professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School. "People create rumours when they are uncertain and need to create certainty to fill a vacuum," he added. "They gossip to create a social network and put themselves in that circle and give themselves an advantage by being in with the right group.

"Gossiping - which goes back to the Stone Age and beyond - is good for you. It makes you more psychologically positive. "A good boss should not try to quash rumours and gossip with memos and e-mail, he should get involved in it. I call it management-by-wandering-about. Go out there and communicate properly. He should know what people talk about."

The report, published by the influential journal Harvard Business Review, urges employers to communicate by talking instead of on computers or paper.

Without the traditional gossip network - from neighbours chatting over the garden fence to political spin doctors - society could crumble. "Any social system needs gossip to remain intact," he added.

Gregory Rodriquez writes in The Los Angeles Times July 2, 2007

A few years ago, two British researchers concluded that celebrity-watching — if it doesn't become an all-out obsession — can be a healthy part of adolescent development and bonding. A survey of English schoolchildren revealed that "celebrity attachments" serve as "pseudo-friends" who become the subject of gossip and discussion among their real friends. The kids' fascination with celebs not only helps them bond with classmates but to become more autonomous from their parents. Meantime, those children who do develop unhealthy fixations on the lives of stars were likely to be lonely and lacking strong bonds with family and friends.

I suspect that the same elements driving adolescent fandom in Britain — bonding, socialization — also explain why so many grown-ups like to keep up on Brangelina and Britney. Sure, the handful of fanatics who literally worship Michael Jackson or Madonna are maladjusted, but there are millions of others for whom celebrity gossip serves a useful function, especially in societies no longer characterized by tightknit communities.

Study after study has tracked our eroding commitment to community, as more Americans spend time with their computers, or at work, instead of in bowling leagues or with their loved ones. Following the trials and tribulations of the rich and famous can be a way for us to connect to others and even to make sense of our lives. No, I don't mean that we actually think that Angelina Jolie is our friend, but that the chatter she inspires can sometimes link us to strangers.

Think of how sports talk breaks the ice between men. As a male who doesn't much care for sports, I envy the kind of bonding that sports lovers share. Celebrity gossip may be more associated with women, but it crosses gender lines more readily than sports. And it provides the juicy stories and personal dilemmas that people love to chat about and analyze together.

Whispering about the lives of others always has served as a finely tuned social warning system that helps people avoid the inevitable pitfalls of life. Did you hear who she hooked up with? Can you believe he did that? How could they have fallen for the Nigerian e-mail scam? Plenty of not-so-idle gossip warns us about bad guys, the consequences of certain types of behavior and iffy practices of all types.

If you watched the extraordinarily boring Larry King interview with Paris Hilton, you realize that Paris herself isn't anywhere near as interesting as what we all think about her. That's the point. The long arm of electronic media has allowed us to include an ever-expanding world of complete strangers in our social circle. And just as we would a neighbor or classmate, we judge and dissect her life as a means to justify our own, reinforce our life choices, sort out and share our opinions with others.

"She's an idiot." "I feel sorry for her." "She got what she deserved." However we talk about Paris, it says a lot more about us than it does about her.

Paris mania feeds an admittedly flimsy form of community, but don't blame her, the media or the unwashed masses for that. Everyone from Tocqueville to Wim Wenders has commented upon the dangers of anomie in American life. Over the last half a century, patterns of suburbanization have intensified that sense of alienation and rootlessness. Since the 1970s, a growing disenchantment with politics has further loosened our links to community. We don't like the political process because we feel that we have no effect on it, and we suspect that it's dominated by narrow, powerful forces that don't have our best interests at heart.

Morality of Gossip

Luke writes in 1998: When I first came to Judaism, I took on the value that gossip was a sin. It was destructive and unethical. Then, from late 1995 onwards, I resumed my career as a journalist. Part of my job is to deal in gossip. I read Rabbi Joseph Telushkin's book on gossip (Words That Wound, Words That Heal) and found it initially impressive.

Now I've developed a reputation as a professional gossip. That it is what I do for a living. I've now also revised my views on the morality of gossip. I now think of gossip as like any other activity, morally neutral. The morality of gossip depends entirely on its content and context. I now no longer think of gossip as overwhelmingly destructive.

I'm reading a book entitled "Good Gossip." It is one of many academic works over the past few years in praise of gossip, pointing out the good that gossip does, such as bonding, community, developing, enforcing and subverting norms, challenging power, overturning institutions. I no longer agree with the comment that idiots talk about people, and the wise about ideas. Why are ideas more important than people? Sometimes they are and sometimes they are not. Context is king.

Ethel writes: "My experience with gossip was work-related. I took a college course on management of human resources. To my great shock, there was a section defining the grapevine as a legitimate communication source. It changed my whole POV concerning gossip. It's so rational too. So it's really important to accept gossip and then manage it personally so it doesn't effect one's own good judgement. One's personal observations should be primary when decision-making is needed."

Larry writes:

Gossip serves an additional role that is still significant today, but was very important to our ancestors. Gossip develops the values, significance, judgmental capacity, and group concensus -- or chasm -- of the gossipers.

I agree with Luke's words, "...the good that gossip does, such as bonding, community, developing, enforcing and subverting norms..."

Ancestors were ravaged by disease, infirmity, and the elements, to an extent that we find hard to imagine. If a member of the group were suspected of being, what we now call, less lucid .... then drawing that person into gossip could test that person's judgment.

Puzzles are central to mythology ; ditto for gossip. I wonder if any languages have one word for our two concepts: myth and gossip.

There's that guy on the radio, who's arguing for the importance of Values in our schools. Lots of settings determine values ---

-- Eye-to-eye explanation from parent to child

-- Formal explanation by religious institutions

-- Formal teaching by schools.

Some people have the audacity to claim that *actual practice* is at least half as significant as *formal explanation* in these three settings.

Now, let's consider ----- gossip: Children's values are shaped as much by vicarious participation in gossip, as they are shaped by some of the settings mentioned above.

Among teenagers exploring the realm of less-restricted behavior, gossip is not so much about confirming 'valid' information about THEM 'over there.' Instead, gossip forges and shephards the behavior of oneself and one's closest peers. It does so for
better or worse.

In summary, here's another puzzle: As a whole, gossip is bad. Yet not only is some gossip good, some is essential.

From The New Republic, William Powers writes 6/9/97:

...undergirding all tabloid journalism is a rigid code of right and wrong, in which people are held to very particular standards of behavior. In this system, which may be the closest thing we have today to a universal populist ethos, all the ancient social norms are honored: thou shalt not kill, rape, steal, lie and so forth. But in the tabloids' reckoning of the world, which is calculated to mirror that of the supermarket masses, two sins in particular--pride and hypocrisy-- have special importance. This is why the JonBenet Ramsey case, which in the tabloid storyline is really about two parents who exploited their daughter's beauty to feed their own pride, is the premier tabloid story of the day. Many children are murdered each year, but this is not just a murder story, it's a morality play about a "tiny beauty" and her wicked stage parents. "Away from the bright lights," the Star reported, "she just wanted to be a normal kid." This is probably pretty much the way most Americans see the story, too.

And to the tabloids, the O.J. Simpson story, which preceded JonBenet in the number-one spot, was not a parable about race, as the mainstream media suggested. It was about a celebrity who thought he was above the law. (And this is certainly the way a lot of people saw the O.J. case.) Nothing raises tabloid fury more than the spectacle of a celebrity getting away with something, or getting above himself. In the pages of the National Enquirer, drug abuse, infidelity and myriad other wrongs are often forgiven, but if you are caught pretending to be something you're not--caught being too big for your britches--they'll flay you. Far from mindlessly adoring celebrities in the way the New York glossies and many newspapers do, the tabloids cover movie stars and other famous people with one eye narrowed, ever-vigilant for phoniness, grossness or some species of immoral behavior. Violators are swiftly, gleefully cut down. It is ruthless and ugly and cruel, but it is arguably more honest than the way the proper press covers these things. Who do you think has a truer sense of Roseanne--the average tabloid reader or the reader of John Lahr's New Yorker valentine? When Magic Johnson was revealed to be infected with the HIV virus, who did a more brutally honest job of covering the story of his promiscuous lifestyle--the tabs or the Times?

From 12/27/2000 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

But the battle against gossip has been a long and mostly unsuccessful one, partly because it's such a fixture of human communication, according to Dan Santoro, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh -- Johnstown.

"People have always gossiped," he said. "Maybe, at one time, gossip was news if you lived in a village and there were no formal channels for disseminating information."

In pre-industrial societies, he said, relationships were based on customs and traditions. "What was really important," Santoro said, "was your reputation. The fear of your reputation being questioned kept people in line.

"In our society right now, it has just become a big industry. Your personal reputation isn't as important as it used to be."

Gossip and rumors always have been a part of politics. In her book, "Scorpion Tongues: The Irresistible History of Gossip in American Politics" (William Morrow, 1998), author Gail Collins writes about George Washington's alleged mistresses, the rumor that Grover Cleveland beat his wife so severely during her pregnancy that their daughter was born with extensive brain damage and the story that when Woodrow Wilson proposed to his second wife, she was so surprised that she fell out of bed.

Various magazines, talk shows and TV programs featuring "stars" such as Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern and Don Imus track the real and imagined peccadilloes of public figures.

Jim Lichtman, an author and ethics specialist in Santa Barbara, Calif., divides gossip into two categories: talk among family and friends, and malicious or unethical gossip. That does not mean, he said, that either is right. "Would you want somebody passing around inaccurate or false rumors about yourself?" he asked.

"The real criteria we should use, although it sounds simple, is to more or less follow the golden rule: `Do unto others as you would have others do to you.' "

Lichtman is author of "The Lone Ranger's Code of the West" (Scribbler's Ink, 1996), a book focusing on eight ethical values of the masked do-gooder. A frequent speaker on ethics to corporations, Lichtman likes to challenge his audiences to ponder ethics questions with, "What would the Lone Ranger do?"

It's a way, he said, to force people to be more conscious about their decisions and have a greater commitment to ethical values. To that end, Lichtman said, a person doesn't have to speak gossip in order to be guilty of it. And it doesn't stop there.

"As soon as you participate in it, you are involved," he said. "You begin to lower the bar for yourself. Other things become less important. "In business and in public life today ... the thing you erode away faster than anything else is trust. Once the credibility is gone ... you're going to have to work two, three, four times as hard to get it back."

Luke says 5/15/05: I have studied the Chafetz Chaim (translated into English) and rabbi Telushkin's book Words That Wound, Words That Heal. In fact, I have read every book (religious or secular) on gossip I could get my hands on (about two dozen).

If I were to observe the restrictions of the Chafetz Chaim, I would not be able to publish most of my website lukeford.net. I wouldn't be able to work as a journalist. Nobody would. Journalism would be impossible.

Surely Judaism's teachings on forbidden speech are more complex than what the Chafetz Chaim codified. The example of Judaism's sacred texts, such as the Bible and the Talmud, are filled with examples of Jewish leaders being held accountable for their behavior and called out on it.

The problem with much of the reflexive religious teachings against gossip is that they focus on the harm done to specific individuals who are gossiped about (and let's focus here on gossip that is true) and ignore the benefit widely shared among many people from gaining the information of that gossip. As in free trade, the price paid by targets of gossip can be huge, giving them a huge incentive to fight against gossip, while the benefits of the gossip are spread out among hundreds of people. Thus, few of them have an incentive to speak out on behalf of the accurate gossipm, such as that a particular rabbi should not work with kids or counsel women because he's a predator.

Does This Information Serve The Public Good?

Larry Yudelson writes 5/15/05:

Many years ago, when I was at Yeshiva College and on the editorial board of Hamevaser, I had a late night discussion with some of my colleagues about the question of Lashon Hora [gossip] and journalism. The standard, according to the Chofetz Chaim, is not "is the information derogatory" but "does this information serve the public good"?

Clearly, political news qualifies, because a society with a press that criticizes its leaders is better than a society (such as the Chofetz Chaim's Russia) lacking such a press.

In fact, a quick glance at NYTimes.com indicates that all of the current headlines meet the criterion of serving the public interest.

The one exception that we thought of, where standard journalistic practice is at odds with the Public Good standard of the Chofetz Chaim, would the publication of allegations and other charges filed against citizens who are still presumptively innocent. I believe Halacha might mandate that the right to release the name of an accused or arrested suspect prior to conviction belongs only to the accused. This would be where the citizen is in custody or otherwise not dangerous; situations like the FBI Most Wanted List, where the criminals are at large and fleeing arrest, are different, because society has an interest in catching suspects.

Luke says: I don't believe "public good" was the Chofetz Chaim's standard. Where does he say that?

Rabbi Ari Kahn writes: "Individuals who behave in an extreme anti-social manner lose the right of being protected by the laws of Loshan Hara. Individuals who are predators certainly lose this right. Individuals who may be future victims have a right to know about someone who is potentially threatening them. I am suggesting that a Beit Din make these determinations."

The Making Of The American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times

George Will writes in The NYT Book Review:

For more than three decades, [Jeffrey Peter] Hart, an emeritus professor of English at Dartmouth, has been a senior editor of National Review. There he has seen, and helped to referee, conservatism's struggles of self-definition. His book is a gossipy memoir leavened by a quick skimming of 50 years of political history. "I confess," he says, "to a fondness for gossip, which, indeed, is a conservative genre. Gossips do not want to change the world; they want to enjoy it."

Mickey Kaus argues that reporting on the private lives of politicians gets people more interested in politics. He writes July 9, 2007 on Slate: "L.A.'s mayor faces some N.Y. tabloid-style questioning at a news conference. The L.A. Times reporter who didn't get the story doesn't know quite what to make of this new state of affairs--I detect a mild sneering tone! Luke Ford sees a "beautiful synchronicity." ... I think Angelenos may be actually getting interested in local politics for once, which will give us better government in the long run. Special interests (e.g., unions, developers) have less power when people are actually paying attention. [What will happen if all the pols in power are no longer womanizers, etc.?--ed Not a serious possibility.]"

Academic Kevin Glynn said the tabloid media "multiplies and amplifies the heterogenous voices and viewpoints in circulation in contemporary culture, giving rein to many that are typically excluded from the dominant regime of truth... The shrill and revulsive response to tabloid media form 'respectable' journalism and other elite social quarters indicates the extent to which their popularity threatens officialdom's power to regulate the discursive procedures through which we make sense of society and ourselves. 'Serious' journalism is far more concerned with controlling, organizing, and ordering the hierarchy of voices it admits into its discurse reportoir than is tabloid news, whose contents are driven by ratings and circulation." (Pg. 132-133 of Journalism: Truth or Dare).

Ian Hargreaves writes:

Glynn brings to his advocacy for tabloid journalism a specifically political case, involving the election to the governorship of Minnesota in 1998 of Jesse "The Body" Ventura, a former professional wrestler and radio talk-show "shock jock." Glynn sees the very high turnout in this election (over 60 per cent, compared with less than 50 per cent even for presidential races) resulting from Ventura's fluency with tabloid-style communication, that enabled him to assemble an extraordinary coalition of supporters, many of them normally excluded from the political domain. (Pg. 134)

Liz Smith says: "Gossip is just news running ahead of itself in a red satin gown."

Camille Paglia says: "Half-fictionalized as they are, the tabloids with their twin themes of sex of violence tell the pagan truth about life."

Jack Shafer writes for Slate Aug. 27, 2007 about New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt's Aug. 26 column:

One of the flaws in Hoyt's thinking is his belief that one's reputation is a possession --like a car or a tennis racket -- when one's reputation actually resides in the minds of others. A person can have as many reputations as people who know him or know of him. Positing that the top link in a Google search of a name equals somebody's reputation is silly, and Hoyt's column only encourages that notion.

If Google users conclude that an individual is guilty of fondling a child just because a Times story reported his arrest, that says more about their gullibility than it does about the inadequacies of the Web or the Times. The Times is wonderful, but it's not a vaccine against stupidity.

Whatever their shortcomings, search engines are a million times superior to human memory, which they are rapidly replacing. 

The Web also offers those wounded a variety of ways to manage their reputations and mitigate the offenses of the New York Times (and of other publications). 

By exaggerating the absolute power of the Times and Google to determine reputation, Hoyt's column encourages people to think of themselves as technopawns. (It also damages Hoyt's reputation in the process, but that's his problem.) I'm all for getting the Times to correct meaningful errors of fact in a decent interval, but if you want to secure a better reputation than the one that Google currently spits out, get busy and build it yourself.