So when I ran across this column in Newsweek from Anna Quindlen, it registered with me as it puts the spotlight on our obsession with gossip culture. I think she hits this one out of the park.
Quindlen: Gossip in the Age of Anna Nicole
Gossip is so hard-wired into humans that someday scientists may isolate the gene. But at least we used to mainly gossip about people we actually knew.Knowing, of course, is what is supposed to set humans apart from animals. After stalking the bogeyman she and the other kids have created out of imagination and legend, Scout Finch, the little girl in "To Kill a Mockingbird," meets the real Boo Radley. In the flesh he is vulnerable, harmless and human, and Scout leads him back inside, away from punishing public scrutiny. Today, if the occasion arose, Boo would be photographed through his window, the little treasures he gave the Finch children auctioned on eBay, the people on his block interviewed by Nancy Grace and Pat O'Brien. And none of this would seem noteworthy or gratuitous or cruel. After all, we wouldn't even know the guy. We would just think we knew everything about him.
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