Word: gossiper
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...surprising, then, that Ehrlichman has to fill his pages with mere gossip from the Nixon years, items which he seems to think are "inside information." Do you know that Bebe Rebozo was "Nixon's source of undemanding mental relaxation"? Do you know that "Pat Nixon grew in her role as First Lady"? Do you know that Tricia Nixon once stuck Ehrlichman with the tab for lunch"? Do you care? And when Ehrlichman's narrative does occasionally touch on an illuminating point--like when he mentions that Nixon and Colson attempted to coerce network television executives to procure more favorable coverage...
Indeed, Molloy makes no bones about instructing his reader to become a basic sleaze. Find out who's rising, and do everything you can to ingratiate yourself with him. "One of the best ways to do this is to listen to the office gossip. Get to know the office gossips and pump them. Find out who knows whom, who is related to whom, who's been sleeping with whom...
Soak the story in reality, bad luck, stupidity and evil for a while, and it might marinate into the parable of Jack Abbott and Norman Mailer: the redemption of the distinctly uninnocent. In one sense, the tale is merely a particularly sensational item of literary gossip. But buried amid the blood and chic is an interesting question of principle. Almost everything, as Thomas De Quincey noticed, has either a moral handle or an aesthetic handle. Which handle do you reach for in the Abbott-Mailer case...
...will not be the only type of newspaper to survive and prosper. Television has also prompted the growth of what might be called the celebrity industry. People magazine first capitalized on this development on a national level, and the effects are now trickling down to the more local media. "Gossip" is bigger than ever, thanks to television, because there are more people well-known than ever--actors, politicians, businessmen and especially athletes. Sports, in fact, has been the other major beneficiary of television's dominance. Professional and college sports have never enjoyed as much popularity as they...
...stuff that neither television nor the more respectable print outlets were doing. The Post went heavily into crime ("Gutsy Hell Camp Victim Foils Thugs"--a story about a mugging of a concentration camp survivor in yesterday's edition), sentiment ("Medal for New York's bravest little girl...") and gossip (at least two pages worth every day). Then he packaged it in the most attention-grabbing manner, hired the most garish cartoonist in the United States, David (Rorshach Test) Rigby, and started pushing it in the morning as well as the afternoon...