Los Angeles Times gossip columnist Liz Smith recently attempted to put a feather on the sick-bed of the gossip industry. There's no doubt that she's as contrite and grounded now as Celine Dion, whom she quotes as having dropped a lawsuit against a tabloid in light of the World Trade Center attacks. She felt that there was a need to say something in her recent columns about the state of her world, her business. Her efforts have been pointless and insincere.

Had she just played the only card she held and been naked about her feelings in light of the abrupt horror that happened on September 11th, maybe her words about her job would have rung true. But she didn't and they don't.

She's never been a good writer. Her stories are fed to her by celebs and their people, people whom she seeks approval from. They range in depth from: who's bra strap broke at what party, to what an anonymous producer did to an up and coming actor, also unnamed. Her 'personal' scoops with main show biz players are no more quaking than Barbara Walters' flatulent cooing and doorknob dumbness. Even if she had used this vacant profession to gain power and money and influence, she didn't do much with it. She didn't turn to marshaling any causes that the public would automatically identify with. She didn't start writing well about meaningful issues in the media. She just kept writing about sneak previews, catering fiascoes and private parties gone scandalously awry.

Smith says she 'regrets that she doesn't have all the answers' in response to general queries as to why interest in 'gossip' has waned. There are about 6,000 to 7,000 reasons actually. Their gossip is being hung like flags in reverential, truncated TV and magazine-wide tributes; but they don't have asses like J-Lo. They don't have nervous breakdowns with as much style as Mariah Carey. Those poor souls—many who knew they were going to die a horribly out of control death in a fashion one can't begin to imagine—weren't involved with gang-bangers, drugs, DUI arrests or liposuction.

How distanced from reality is her struggle to even attempt to mourn the loss of gossip? Granted, thousands of people are employed to perpetuate the gossip industry; they get paid better than people slaughtering our food supplies across the board and the blood on their hands is the fair game of a slaughtered reputation. Anyone as shifty and bounding as a gossip industry legion can certainly readjust their job skills and find a more validating and probing existence.

Then again, they're not to blame. It's not the editors, unnamed sources, paparazzi, publishers, or reporters who can't write worth a damn that are making such a meaningless force into an important one. It's the majority of the United States that can't cross the check out counter without buying the odd copy of The Star, or People magazine. Just like Americans don't like to sacrifice basic amenities or go out of their normal way because we all work so damn hard; we're not going to be able to turn off the craving for popcorn intelligentsia.

People have battled lung cancer and have blow-holes and they can't quit cigarettes. What is gossip if not a strange addiction. There is absolutely no value to it. There are no cures—the reporters who do break stories would easily find real homes for such stories in real pubs if tabloids and gossip shows disappeared. Maybe some human interest stories would be lost, but maybe if we all treated our fellow humans creatively and with compassion and empathy there wouldn't be a need for articles in crap magazines.

There's something about staying at home with a few kids that makes you just die to see what Catherine Zeta-Jones was wearing two weeks ago, I guess. We like to know that being as thin as Calista Flockhart is really truly the freak show that it is—when you see her looking thinner than a grocery cart, in an uncontrolled photographic experience—your guilt about being 10-15 pounds over your sexiest weight doesn't feel so bad anymore.

We all said it was heinous when deathbed photos of Elvis and John Lennon were published, but those issues sold like water from the Fountain of Youth and go for big bucks today on eBay.

Who doesn't like to see Jean Claude Van-Damme looking so drunk that you can't believe he can zip his fly. Tim Allen's mugshot? Sure, gimme; I'll have to put the phone bill off another week and it's going to cost three times what it did last year to keep my kids warm this winter.

Is some supermodel having a rough time? Please, let me hate her now. What is it going to cost? $3.50? Fine, I'll cut back and change one less tampon this week.

So gossip, Ms. Smith is in no danger of blowing away with the wind of some newfound sense of consciousness in the public. We're still going to gag up the money for the next Jon Benet Ramsey lead. There will always be armies of people who will look for the new issues and fresh columns because who wants to think about an army of covert fanatics laying in wait to destroy us all and ascend to paradise?

Gossip isn't going anywhere. And Liz Smith despite, or in spite of, the misgivings she may or may not have about her profession, isn't going anywhere either.

Copyright © 2001 Viki Reed. All Rights Reserved.

Viki Reed is a writer and a mother.