Daily Inspiration Quote by Liz Smith

Liz Smith draws a bright, slippery line that flatters her trade while quietly indicting her audience. By dubbing "good gossip" as "just what's going on", she launders the whole enterprise into something like reporting: socially useful intel, the human version of a morning briefing. It reframes gossip as access, not malice, and positions the columnist as a conduit rather than an instigator. The move is shrewd because it borrows journalism's moral authority while keeping gossip's speed and intimacy.

Then she flips the blade. "Bad gossip" is "salacious, mean, and bitchy" - a triple hit of taboo and cruelty - and she doesn't pretend it's marginal. "The kind most people really enjoy" is the punchline and the indictment. Smith isn't moralizing so much as acknowledging the market: outrage and humiliation have always sold better than neutral updates. The subtext is complicity. Readers want the sugar rush of other people's mess; writers supply it; everyone agrees to call it "news" when it's convenient.

Context matters: Smith came up in the heyday of the celebrity column, when Hollywood and Manhattan ran on controlled leaks, studio spin, and whispered reputations. Her line reads like a veteran's ethics statement that knows it's already compromised. She concedes the low appetites without pretending she can opt out of them, and that honesty is exactly why it lands. It's not a defense of gossip so much as a diagnosis of attention: we claim we want information, but we pay for blood.