The Harm of Gossip
Even gossip apparently harmless, when widely and persistently circulated, is potent for evil. It both belittles and perverts. It belittles by inverting the relative importance of things, thus dwarfing the thoughts and aspirations of a people …. Easy of comprehension, appealing to that weak side of human nature which is never wholly cast down by the misfortunes and frailties of our neighbours, no one can be surprised that it usurps the place of interest in brains capable of other things. Triviality destroys.
(This could have been written today as an indictment of the passionate interest of some in reality television shows, or of the panting journalists who dream of finding a politician or celebrity compromised.
But it is from an article called ‘The Right to Privacy’ in the Harvard Law Review from 1890 by US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Boston lawyer Samuel Warren referenced in the September 16, 2011 edition of the Times Literary Supplement.)
