September 8, 2001

7:13 PM

Hmmmm. A new national effort to reduce verbal violence and gossip. The goal is to promote the value and practice of ethical speech improving our democracy and building respect, honor and dignity.
posted by semmi (10 comments total)

shut the fuck up.
posted by quonsar at 7:32 PM on September 8, 2001

Jonathan Alter seems to believe its rather goofy. I'm inclined to agree.
posted by owillis at 7:43 PM on September 8, 2001

I heard Jonathan Alter pops bennies while masturbating to the Sears Little Miss catalog.
posted by Doug at 8:19 PM on September 8, 2001

Granted, gossip control sounds like the least of our problems. But for what it's worth, right speech is one of the steps on the Eightfold Path of Buddhism.
posted by muckster at 8:20 PM on September 8, 2001

I'm bout it, bout it.
posted by mcsweetie at 11:27 PM on September 8, 2001

Irwin Katsof, co-executive director of WordsCanHeal.org said, "In the post-Columbine era we need to reduce gossip and verbal abuse that is behind so much pain in our society. This campaign offers free educational tools for schools, children, families and businesses in order to help heal our society."

Of all the factors involved in the Columbine shooting I don't think gossip was in the top ten. Guns, hazing, cliques, and messed up teens definitely, but gossip? Well meaning words and rules are pretty prevalent in the world's religions and they have a much larger lobby than wordscanheal.org. Nice way to to exploit a tragedy though, almost passed the radar.

Looking at the list of celebs this just looks like a way for Tom Cruise and Ricky Martin to get people to stop calling them gay. I couldn't find who the "private contributors" were but I have the sneaking suspicion that this is celeb run and celeb orientated.

This is money that could have been spent as a watchdog group looking for blatant lies from both advertisers and negative ads from politicians, instead the money is seemingly going towards being nice to celebrities.

I don't know about the rest of you but a nice angry verbal catharsis is needed as much as food and water. Just not as often. Isn't US culture repressed and sensitive enough? Guess not.
posted by skallas at 11:52 PM on September 8, 2001

i heard this web site is set up by the church of $cientology.

heh heh heh.
posted by sugarfish at 11:54 PM on September 8, 2001

Don't you mean [gossip] "I heard this web site is set up by the church of $cientology." [/gossip]
posted by Su at 2:02 AM on September 9, 2001

Gossip is for MetaTalk. Not here.
posted by crasspastor at 3:29 AM on September 9, 2001

And once we implement NewSpeak, we can eliminate words for hate and violence - and then freedom, choice, independence, individuality, etc.
posted by RevGreg at 2:10 PM on September 9, 2001