STAMP OUT GOSSIP

My Best Friend's Mama's Sister's Hairdresser's Kuz'n Won't Like This a Bit...

A bunch of Hollywood celebrities have joined a new movement to ---- and it's almost too horrible to put the words on my beautiful screen----Stamp Out Gossip.

In these times of hyperpatriotism, this is bad news indeed. Gossip, here in the Don't Show Me State, like silly aprons and whining about our cable bill, is as American as it gets. Without it, we'd all wander around talking about the weather or, worse, one another's root canals or inflamed bunions.

Boring.

I'll tell you something else. Celebrities, most of whom are a bunch of Vicodin-addicted wife swappers, (that's what it said in the Star) have no business getting involved in causes. They just look silly. Just because one has great pipes (Babs Streisand) doesn't qualify one to do much of anything except lounge about the pool between bookings and ponder the wisdom of marrying a man who brags in public about shopping at Big Lots (Jim "Tan in a Bottle" Brolin)

It's very trendy to slam gossip these days, but let me be the first Brave American to stand up at the metaphorical water cooler, and say, "Hooey!"

Gossip is the very foundation upon which this great country was built. Who knows where we'd be if a certain G.W. hadn't sleep around in every little B&B on he eastern seaboard, wooden teeth soaking in a glass beside the bed?

Sure, gossip can be malicious and has been known to destroy lives and careers but, hey, nothing's perfect.

The Words Can Heal movement has been embraced by a bunch of politicians. I feel better already. And I'm certain Gary Condit--- y'all remember the adulterous poofy-haired louse---- must be breathing a huge sigh of relief.

Of course, there's really no reason for us gossipmongers to fret. I remember a years back when Oprah (who, I heard, may really be a man) had a show in which she explored the evils of gossip and pledged her own self to just stop it. Fast forward to the next day's episode when she's asking Nicole Kidman if it's true that Tom Cruise has webbed feet. So what happened to the Cruise/Kidmans anyway? They say they just didn't have enough time to spend with each other because they both have such busy film careers. Like that's a bad thing? One wonders when they managed to see their two adopted children, but then one doesn't want to sound judgmental. Oh, sure one does.

Nicole had bragged, right before the breakup, that they were "well past the seven-year itch" and that their marriage was super-solid in it's eleventh year. Of course, it was solidified in the way most of our are; By trotting around our naughty bits for all the world to see in a perfectly ghastly Stanley Kubrick movie. The Cruise/Kidmans sued the tabloids for saying they needed a sex therapist to coach them on those steamy scenes in Eyes Wide Shut and won the suit. But remember what my aunt Sadavee always said; "A bit dog hollers." I don't know what it means either, but it somehow feels appropriate here.

The good gossip news is that this puts Tommy boy back in the game. Men love to hate Tom Cruise, rolling their eyes and calmly calling him a girly man. Of course, this always come from men who haven't budged from their BarcaLoungers since the Atlanta Olympics.

When they're not making headlines getting divorced and bed-hopping (see Zeta-Jones, Catherine), celebrities are always getting on silly bandwagon for this or that and I suspect this stop-gossip foolery will have to run it's course.

We have celebs to thank for a distressing recent trend called the Lesser Boyfriend. This got started with Julia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt. She is the radiant Oscar winner who is paid (notice I didn't say "earns") $25 million per movie. He is the also-ran who latched on to Julia and immediately quit his day job on Law and Order, where he displayed the emotional range of, say, Joe Friday.

Other celebs followed suit. J-Lo dumped Puffy Combs for an unknown backup dancer, for instance, before finally coming to her senses and discovering just what my mama always told me" it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.

The lesser boyfriend? Thanks a lot, sister chicks.

This is a trend we don't need but will no doubt trickle down and splatter all over us like so much seagull poop. I envision a nation of newly empowered men who seize this chance to become the professional wind beneath our wings. Just sit there and look soulful while she picks up the check. Nice work, if you can get it, right?

Wrong. The lesser boyfriend is a terrible idea for the Julias and the Jennifers but it's a horrendously bad idea for the Amber Dawns and Misti Raes out here in the real world, where soul boy's gonna throw it in your face that he gave up his dream of becoming a professional wrasler and comic-strip artist just for you.

Of course, being a gossipmonger of the lowest order, I fed like plankton on the Big Breakup, when Julia woke up and realized she wanted somebody who could do more than anticipate the exact moment when her eight-bucks a bottle water was getting dangerously low in the glass.

Naturally, Bratt got married, like, six months after Julia dumped him and I'm looking at his bride and thinking; "Hell-O! You have long reddish brown hair and sausage lips. Get a clue, rebound girl."

I know, I know, what's the point Mule. The point is, we can't kick gossip to the curb. Why? Because it's fun.

Taking a pledge to never gossip, a measure supported by this new movement, is just plain scary. The thought that I could never again speculate to all my friends and neighbors about why my mailman shaving his legs is as depressing as back fat.

That said, I do believe it's important to set the record straight if you find out you've spread misinformation. The mailman's a triathlete, it turns out, and shaves his legs to cut down on the wind resistance when he's cycling.

Yeah, I believe that.