The gossip truth.

Forgive me if I've told this story in this space before, but I think it's interesting.

In my checkered career in publishing, I've done a number of different jobs, including proofreading, writing, copyediting, and fact-checking. I was a fact-checker before the term became a synonym for confirmation bias. I've had at least one shouting match with an editor who wanted to run bad information because the truth ruined the story. Try that at the Washington Post these days and see how long you have a job.

Probably the strangest week in my career, though, was spent as a fill-in fact-checker at a popular weekly celebrity gossip magazine. I disdain celebrity and I eschew gossip, but I was desperate for work at the time. 

Why was it so strange? Because absolutely everything I expected about the job was the opposite of what it was. Here's what I mean:

1) It was dull.

I thought the work would be frantic, and maybe impossible. "I just got word that Alexis Bigbutt is pregnant! The father is Jimmy Cueball! We need to confirm that!" But no. When those kind of pieces would come in, the writers -- the life's blood of the business -- would just say "That's from one of my confidential sources," and that would be it. We'd just shrug and make sure all the names were spelled right and the ages were correct. Maybe it would have been more interesting for me if I knew who anyone was. But I could not get shocked at news about Gunnah Rimez's drug arrest or the hysterics on Real Housewives of Scranton. 

2) It was quiet.

Consequently, there was none of the running around one might expect of a weekly gossip sheet. The photo editors probably worked harder than anyone, but they kept to their own corner of the floor. Everything else was as quiet as a bank vault. I barely got to know the two women in my department. We took care of whatever crossed our desks, then it was back to Internet surfing.

3) The place was dark.

Everyone thinks Manhattan magazine offices are bright and sunny, because they believe everything they see on TV. This was an old building and the managers had all the windows. Those of us in the pit in cubicle city got no sun at all. Not that I was jealous -- we were on a low floor of the building, sandwiched in the middle of the block, so on two sides there were no windows and on the other sides you just looked at the buildings across the street.

4) Everyone was really nice.

Really, not a soul was mean or brash or snarky or creepy or crude. I don't even think anyone stole lunch from the fridge. The celebs may have hated the rag (although in fact they love gossip media -- it's all publicity), but it wasn't because the editors were cruel. It was a friendly office. 

I'd like to say they also paid way above the going rate, but they didn't; it was good, as I recall, but not generous.

After my week, they thanked me and said they'd let me know if they needed me again. In fact, I did get a call not long after, but in the meantime I had gotten a temp job that meant more hours for a longer stretch, so I had to turn them down. 

A few months later I was back in the book end of the business, working for an academic press in an office that was even darker and quieter, but less friendly. Everyone had a resentment. It also had the slowest elevators of any building I've ever worked in, and we were near the top floor, so it took forever to yabba-dabba-doo and get out of the place at quittin' time. (The actual top floor was a 17th floor penthouse, believe it or not, where a mysterious personage dwelled. On a dare I rode up to that floor, but I could see was a dark foyer and a front door with frosted glass.) 

All that is another story, however. 

He’s always been kinda screwy.

 

The Devil's radio.

I learned the other day that Pope Francis is waging a war on gossip. "Gossip is the terrorism of words," the Holy Father said last July, emphasizing a message he has expounded throughout the year. 

“Whoever gossips is a terrorist,” Francis said in February. “He is a terrorist in his own community. It’s as if his words were a bomb that he tosses against this one or that one, and then walks away. This destroys! Whoever does this destroys, like a bomb, and then walks away.”

I think the pope is overstating the case somewhat---in many cases gossip causes little harm, but there's no such thing as "little terrorism," just unsuccessful terrorism. But there is no question that gossip ruins lives, and poisons the practitioner as well as the listener and the victim.

Around these parts, the public schools are starting up again today, so it seems like as good a time as any to mention that as a public service announcement. Gossip is a menace; it is a vice that has won the currency of a virtue.

I've been the victim of gossip, some true, some false, all exaggerated. I've also gossiped, usually convincing myself that there was a good and noble reason: I was giving a warning, I was eliciting sympathy for the subject, I was spreading humor and bonhomie, I was sharing a confidence with the person to whom I gossiped. I never asked myself if the subject of the gossip would have wanted me telling the secret. What fun would that be?

(Once I spent a week working for a gossip magazine. You know how tawdry and miserable you'd expect a place like that to be? Double it. Now annihilate any ideas of celeb glamour. You're getting closer.)

I have tried to tame my tongue, with mixed success. As St. James writes in his epistle: "Mankind can tame, and has long since learned to tame, every kind of beast and bird, of creeping things and all else; but no human being has ever found out how to tame the tongue; a pest that is never allayed, all deadly poison." It is a sin against the Sixth Commandment, for character assassination is killing part of the man.

Sometimes it's done specifically for the ruin of the victim, as on soap operas, but I would have to say it's most often done to ingratiate one's self with the person to whom one is gossiping. C.S. Lewis believed that one of the most subtle and compelling of the temptations was the desire to be in the secret inner circle. Some inner circles of any society---schools, offices, bureaucracies, lodges, churches, armies, anything---may admit one for one's family, or sense of humor, or looks, or wealth, but all of them will consider admission to someone known to be a reliable source of valuable information. The gossip may not be loved, but he may be needed. Even if the information is not reliable, the gossip may be popular for his vicious attacks on those deemed socially unacceptable to the inner circle.

So there are a lot of reasons why one may want to be a gossip. Probably the best practical advice I ever heard of regarding gossip in the office is that one should listen to it but never spread it. This way one knows what's going on but does not get a rep as untrustworthy. But is it worth it to be immersed in any corrupting influence?

Remember, as George Harrison sang on his last great album:

I heard it in the night, words that thoughtless speak
Like vultures swooping down below on the devil's radio
I hear it through the day, airwaves gettin' filled
With gossip broadcast to and fro on the devil's radio

Change the station.