Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics

Gail Collins kept me alternately laughing or spellbound with her chronology of rumor and innuendo whispered through the ages down America's corridors of power. A must read for anyone who loves American history, public relations, or just "good dirt," Collins defines the issues behind scandals and discusses why certain gossip either grabs our attention or fails to take hold. I had a blast learning with this one. Thanks, Gail!

Gail Gleason Collins has written a marvelous account of the gestation of the media as the filters through which politicians are made or not made into statesmen and stateswomen. She has included a weary but never wearying catalogue of the lubricity of American leaders of past and present. It is a book about sex and scandal--mostly scandal--the birth and life and death of gossip in the United States, ending with a question for the future: a cynical American people tiptoeing through the wreckage of a "role model theory" of American leadership, or a new public idealism which may ignore peccadilloes in favor of real issues. I think it was the English historian Lord Bryce who said of the American Commonwealth, in contrast to English scandals which were usually about sex, that American scandals were usually about money. Gail Collins shows the inaccuracy of that statement--how much more important have the Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, et al "bimbo eruptions" of the present decade been to the media and to the inert public than have the colossal wastage of public funds via the S & L bailout? In my Political Corruption seminar, which concentrates on money corruption of the past, my students were delighted with Gail Collins' book--much more than the econometrically "boring" tome of Professor Susan Rose-Ackerman. So am I--she set out to show the role of gossip in politics, and very accurately depicts the commanding role of the media, given the decline of the political party as moderator. Or perhaps she really shows the death of the non-yellow press as medium between citizen and government, and the advent of Internet dominance. The solidity and decency of Pulitzer and Sulzberger is dead: long live the evanescent (and mendacious) rumoring of Matt Drudge! She is mightily inclusive of American leaders' sex-tinged activities, (though I've heard some stories she hasn't or didn't think worthwhile to include--like the one about Jack Kennedy's antecedent "Honey" Fitzgerald and "Toodles", or about Senator Margaret Chase Smith and her Administrative Assistant). And, I suppose the Clinton bimbo catalogue could have been much more extensive. Who cares? The book is fine; good to read, good (troubling) to think about. Think of "all the news that's fit to print" in terms of the Internet's 24/7 time period, and despair. And did you hear the one about.... Charles F. Burke, Professor of Political Science, Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio.

Scorpion Tongues is a terrific book. Author Gail Collins brings history alive with her wonderful stories about the U.S. presidents. If you think today's assault on President Clinton is bad, you should read Scorpion Tongues! . A must read!

Gail Collins' book on political gossip reads so easily that if my busy life had a concept like "reading a book in one sitting", I would have read it in one sitting. As it was, it took snatches of time over the course of three days, but the book never lost my attention for a minute. The book covers scandals and gossip associated with American politicians since George Washington's time, running all the way up to President Clinton's womanizing problems. Collins does not dwell on any particular story too long (and in some cases is so brief that I wanted to know more), and for a scan of the subject, this book could hardly be bettered. The "9" instead of the "10" is because Collins did not choose to footnote, grouping references instead in a longish by-chapter bibliography at the end of the book. This is inconvenient, because specific quotes and allegations (such as the one that in one instance the crowd was so excited that several women fell into the band pit) would be interesting to trace immediately, at least to their source. But that is a minor distraction, and I can only say again that the book is a delight.

Scorpion Tongues is one of the rare books that simultaneously entertain, inform, teach and provoke lots of thought. On one level it is a history of American gossip. On another level it is a history of American politics. On a third level it playfully teaches the reader that what may appear as gossip is really a statement about the concerns and values of a given era. And...this gossip can have and has had a powerful impact on the future. Ms. Collins is also an artist. Under the reader's eyes she transforms the stuffy old generation of the past into colorful, living, breathing people. Be prepared to learn and laugh a lot...and to have more than enough anecdotes to win a "Great Conversationalist Award."