They Say So

In three lines of flawless poetry, Alexander Pope portrays how gossip is passed from person to person:

“And all who told it added something new,

And all who heard it made enlargements too;

In ev’ry ear it spread, on every tongue it grew.”

If we haven’t considered the subject seriously, we may suppose that there is no harm in the idle telling of tales. At least it keeps up conversation. In fact, we may go so far as to ask as one person did: “If gossiping is such a besetting sin, why isn’t it covered by the commandments?” It is a good question, and there is a good answer: It is covered by the commandments. As we recall, there is a commandment that reads, “Thou shalt not bear false witness”75⎯and a very considerable part of all whispering and taletelling does bear false witness, if not by actual word, at least by innuendo; and if not at first, at least by the color that is added in passing it from person to person. Often there can be more deadly malice in an unkind comment that passes behind hands or in the whispered venom that infectiously spreads from ear to ear than in an open accusation. In Much Ado About Nothing Shakespeare tells of an innocent victim “done to death by slanderous tongues.” As far back as the memory of man goes, as far back as the record is written, reputations have been riddled by the loose lips of people who pass on what they hear, plus what they make up or what they imagine. And almost always they seek to establish their own innocence by saying that someone else said that it was so. “They say so’ is half a lie,”76 wrote Thomas Fuller. Perhaps all of us have asked ourselves: “Who is this ‘they’?” Whoever “they” are, “they” have much to answer for. “They” start most of the malicious rumors. If the truth is too tame, “they” add color to suit themselves. And when “they” are finally identified, and when justice is finally done, “they” will no doubt have to pay a price for every irresponsible word they ever uttered to the injury of others.