ABSTRACT
Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper famously defended her work by saying Nobody's interested in sweetness and light.' The gossip industry involves not only individual celebrities but also, as Jack Levin and Arnold Arluke point out, his or her agent and any publicists and gossip columnists - encompassing cultural intermediaries. The contemporary celebrity industry is almost unthinkable without gossip - the production, generation, and cultivation of it. The interactivity and speed of the Internet has obviously shaped contemporary gossip practices. Wilkes cites the Clinton-Lewinsky affair as one that displays the role of the Internet in contemporary gossip. A history of the word's usage suggests a reason why the practice of gossip has gained negative connotations. Derrida claims that speculation is always already in operation where knowledge or reason is concerned, because 'to borrow is the law. The injunction against gossip and its equivalents in a range of religious texts is striking.
