Word: gossiper
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...press have decreased over the past 15 years from 29% to 19%. Another hint of popular displeasure may be the outsize $1.6 million libel award a jury gave the entertainer Carol Burnett when she won her suit against the National Enquirer. Nobody rushes to defend the shoddy gossiping of the Enquirer-beyond its First Amendment "right" to print it. Even though gossip and personality stories have become a major journalistic trend, the Enquirer does it to excess. The press has other, permanently hostile critics always ready to decry bias in even the most honest reporting. The Janet Cooke case gave...
Normally that kind of talk would prompt indignant editorials defending freedom of the press. But few journalists are eager to defend the methods of a publication that San Francisco Examiner Editor Reg Murphy calls "a disgrace to journalism." Says Syndicated Gossip Columnist Liz Smith of the decision: "It is no precedent against the First Amendment. Responsible publishers, journalists and columnists can go on being fair-minded and work with impunity...
...their gossip, rambling prejudice, loutish sentiments and sloppy spelling, these letters were written with an eagerness to communicate directly and forcefully. They still do, the old Hemingway magic now working on an audience the author never meant to include. Even the last letters, preoccupied with business details and high blood pressure, are full of information and curiosity. Getting the latest dope always meant human contact, not a pharmaceutical connection...
Although he has dabbled elegantly in many literary forms, Author Gore Vidal is probably most impressive as a historical novelist. Not only does he do his homework, but he can make old facts look like contemporary gossip. And he takes wicked pleasure in turning accepted notions about the past upside down. Julian (1964) strikes a blow for paganism and the Roman Emperor who tried to halt the spread of Christianity. Both Burr (1973) and 1876 (1976) portray the U.S. founding fathers and their successors in distinctly unheroic postures. Creation opens on a similarly iconoclastic note. Vidal's target this...
...Fansler hustles a fellowship at Radcliffe and moves to Cambridge--Dunster House, specifically--to unravel the sordid tale. When Fansler makes it to Harvard, remarkably few events occur. The body of her story is little action and lots of chat and gossip and more chat--Robert Ludlum...