Liz Smith, the post-post-menopausal gossip columnist, filed a column for her website WowOWow.com, and boy is it insane. There's the part where the Postie explains how gossip would suck if it was about tyrannical dictators who ruled our lives like Kim Jong Il, or where she says gossip would change in a nuclear apocalypse, or how "gossip culture" would be different if an asteroid hit the earth, or if everyone ran out of electricity. But the two craziest parts are definitely the racially-caricatured, pseudo-Confucian caption under Smith's photo, and also the part where Smith decides the gossip biz is shit:
Everything is turning to shit:
For now, there is already an absolute plethora of bullshit, manufactured photography, and speculation passing for gossip, and it will probably increase, because there is a demand for it and people will pay for it. You could stop the taking of pictures, the intrusions into private life, the non-stop gossip, and speculation about celebrities only if somehow you stopped the democratic idea and interfered with free speech. This already happens in more backward, under-developed societies or more religious ones, but in America, the sky's the limit. People can say what they want and print what they want – the laws of libel and slander in America are quite limited.