Debra Goldman's Consumer Republic

In an attempt to make the telecommunications revolution more warm and fuzzy, AT&T ran a spot during the 1998 Super Bowl featuring a schoolgirl who confides to lunchroom companions her secret crush on a classmate. Immediately this intelligence flies through the tweener telecosm via e-mail, cell phone and beeper. The subject of this gossip is mortified—until the object of her affection, having gotten the word through the e-grapevine, calls her. Meant to be cute and endearing—it got high marks from ad reviewers—this commercial now turns out to be politically incorrect. That is the message from Words CanHeal.org, a nonprofit dedicated to curbing malicious tongues and reducing the amount of hurtful speech. On billboards and in TV ads debuting in Washington, D.C., the capital of trash talk and verbal incivility, the public is urged to just say no to gossip. The ads were created by Suissa Miller in Los Angeles, and the campaign is chaired by David Suissa, one of the most socially engaged ad executives and a tireless publicist for a variety of Jewish causes. Words CanHeal.org, in fact, began as a project of the Jewish educational organization Aish HaTorah. In its current incarnation, the message is not only ecumenical but bipartisan and bicoastal. The honorary chairs, board members and advisers include Senate majority leader Tom Daschle and House speaker Dennis Hastert, Tom Cruise and Quincy Jones, Mort Zuckerman and—my personal favorite—Rudolph Giuliani, a man not particularly well known for biting his tongue. Where, I wonder, is Gary Condit? Surely this is a cause he could get behind. Then last week the campaign picked up the ultimate endorsement, from George W. "Faith-Based Initiative" Bush himself, who will include it in "a package of low-cost proposals designed to promote stronger communities" to be presented later this month, according to the Associated Press. Clearly, "If you can't say something nice, it's best to say nothing at all" is a platform anyone, from celebs to your mother, can support. Little wonder that in his homily to Wisconsin union workers on Labor Day, Bush stuck to calls for "honoring your mother and father" and "loving a neighbor just like you'd like to be loved yourself." Such sentiments are one thing—perhaps the only thing—on which the president and his union audience could agree. It sure beats talking about labor issues. In this era of viral marketing and word-of-mouth strategies, it is ironic that advertising would be employed to discourage gossip. Indeed, Words CanHeal.org, with a measly $300,000 to spend on its billboards and TV spots, is counting on the truism that people will talk. But this is one campaign I hope fails. To paraphrase one of the ads, I totally disagree with it, but I can see its point of view. Gossip can be hurtful. And most people would be better off if they paused to think before opening their mouths. Yet at the same time, gossip is the indispensable currency of social exchange. In sharing it, people become enmeshed in their communities. Why did the citizens of the small towns and urban neighborhoods of yore—the kind that politicians constantly invoke as model communities—gather at the post office or the corner candy store in the first place? To gossip, of course. The Words Can Heal Handbook, another tool in the campaign, inadvertently reveals just how important gossip is to social belonging. Want to avoid gossipy situations? Try one of these handy phrases: "Excuse me, I need to freshen up my drink." "I just can't make it to the cafeteria for lunch today." "I'd love to join you, but I have to get some work done." In other words, if you don't want to gossip, you will be eating a lot of solitary lunches at your desk and skulking solo by the bar at cocktail parties. The words most harmful to civil society are not words that hurt—that, after all, is life—but words that have been worn to meaninglessness by opportunistic use and have thus devolved into cant. "Racism" is one such word plucked from today's headlines. Another is "community"—as in, "a package of low-cost proposals designed to promote stronger communities." The sentimental halo that hovers above this word is designed to obfuscate its meaning rather than illuminate it. The truth is that members of a real community, as opposed to its rhetorical shadow, are bound together as much by their acts of ill will as by those of goodwill. Gossip, for better and worse, is social glue. If we want "stronger communities," we can't do without it.

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Debra Goldman's Consumer Republic

Adweek Staff

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