Abstract
Gossip serves to remind members of the community of the importance of its norms and values. On the negative side, gossip may be used to punish those who transgress and, at the same time, to warn everyone else not to transgress, lest they be shunned as well. Reporting the liabilities of other people through gossip issues a warning: “With every bit of gossip comes the unspoken refrain suggesting, ‘So you had better do thus’ or ‘Beware of ever doing thus.’“ In his study of a small town he called Plainville, sociologist James West similarly reported, “People report, suspect, laugh at, and condemn the peccadilloes of others, and walk and behave carefully to avoid being caught in any trifling missteps of their own.”1
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Notes
James West, Plainville, U.S.A. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), 162.
Sally Engle Merry, “Rethinking Gossip and Scandal.” In Toward a General Theory of Social Control, ed. by Donald Black (Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1984).
Lewis H. Lapham, Liz Smith, Barbara Howar, William F. Buckley, Jr., John Gross, Mark Crispin Miller, and Robert Darnton, “Gossiping about Gossip,” Harper’s 272 (1986): 40.
“Small Percentage of Doctors Responsible for Increase in Suits,” Boston Sunday Globe (June 15, 1986): 1.
Lapham et al., 42.
Sally Engle Merry, “Racial Integration in an Urban Neighborhood: The Social Organization of Strangers,” Human Organization 39 (1980): 59–60.
Merry, “Rethinking Gossip and Scandal,” 289.
Ibid., 292.
Lapham et al., 40.
Jack Anderson, as quoted in “The Kennedy Debacle,” Newsweek (August 25, 1969): 75.
“People of Massachusetts Rush to Support Kennedy,” New York Times (July 25, 1969): 10.
“How Kennedy Rates with Voters,” U.S. News and World Report (September 1, 1969): 12.
“Public Reaction: Charitable, Skeptical,” Time (August 1, 1969): 17.
Ibid., 14.
“Mr. Kennedy’s Response,” New York Times (August 1, 1969): 1.
“The Mysteries of Chappaquiddick,” Time (August 1, 1969): 13.
“The Kennedy Debacle,” Newsweek (August 25, 1969): 75.
Warren Weaver, “McGovern Considers 72 Race; Convinced Kennedy Won’t Run,” New York Times (August 13, 1969): 25.
Robert McFadden, “Kennedy Kopechne Report Questioned,” New York Times (February 22, 1976): 1.
Steven Roberts, “Many Dreams Are Dying in Boston as Kennedys’ Legend Is Tarnished,” New York Times (February 29, 1976): 26.
“The Tide in Ted’s Life,” Time (January 28, 1980): 29.
“The Story of Chappaquiddick Back in the News Again,” ILS. News and World Report (January 28, 1980): 54.
“The Tide in Ted’s Life,” Time (January 28, 1980): 28.
Dick Hafer, Every Family Has One (Washington, DC: Books Inc., 1982).
“A Fraud in the Pulitzers,” Time (April 27, 1981): 52–53.
John Walcott and Gerald F. Seib, Wall Street Journal (August 25, 1986): 1.
“A Bodyguard of Lies,” Newsweek (October 13, 1986): 46.
Our sample consisted of the eighty-one front-page stories appearing in the first Sunday edition of each month.
Tyler Abell, Drew Pearson Diaries 1949–1959 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974), 359.
Newsweek (August 25, 1969): 75.
Oliver Pilat, Drew Pearson (New York: Pocket Books, 1973), 22.
Jay R. Nash, Citizen Hoover (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1972), 199.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
William Greider, “Trial by Silhouette,” Rolling Stone (February 17, 1983): 7.
“Sexual Congress,” The New Republic (August 8, 1983): 5.
Ibid.
“Housecleaning,” Time (July 25, 1983): 21.
Jonathan Alter, “Sex and Pages on Capitol Hill,” Newsweek (July 25, 1983): 17.
“Congress Beset by New Sex Scandal,” U.S. News and World Report (July 25, 1983): 9.
Alter.
“Studds Comes Out,” The Nation (August 20–27, 1983): 132.
“Foe of Studds Says Issue is Child Molestation,” New York Times (June 27, 1984): 22.
Robert Bauman, The Gentlemen from Maryland—The Conscience of a Gay Conservative (New York: Arbor House, 1986), 12.
Ibid., 18.
Ibid., 19.
Ibid.
Ibid., 20.
Ibid., 26.
Ibid.
Ibid., 21.
Ibid., 20–21.
Ibid., 195.
Ibid., 55.
Ibid., 71–72.
Ibid., 76.
Ibid., 141.
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© 1987 Jack Levin and Arnold Arluke
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Levin, J., Arluke, A. (1987). “All the News That’s Fit to Whisper”. In: Gossip. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6112-9_4
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