An epidemic of blabbermouths

By Elizabeth Wetzel Did you know that George Washington had a roving eye, that Thomas Jefferson had a mistress and that Honest Abe Lincoln had much more going with Ann Rutledge than we were told in our innocent youth?

Did you know that FDR, LBJ, and JFK were all very naughty, and that even Ike, for heaven's sake, stands accused of wandering down the old primrose path?

Actually, did you ever really want to know?

Throughout the sordid '60s and halfway through the squalid '70s we've lived in a voyeur's paradise. From the "historians" sifting the dustbins of the past and from the "let-it-all-hang-out" confessers of the present, we are not only offered but force-fed juicy tidbits from the private lives of one and all.

#

The kind of gossip once reserved for the memoirs of notorious cads and shady ladies now pops up with our breakfast toast, a problem for anyone who has become addicted to newsprint and automatically reads whatever words flash before the eyes.

Time was, one could remain happily ignorant of the goings-on of public figures by avoiding the fan magazines and tabloids. Now true confessions appear at random in the conservative papers and headlines scream at the checkout counters.

In education classes 20 years ago, would-be teachers were firmly advised that a teacher's personal opinions were not a part of curricular or extracurricular activities. Any private matters that cropped up in the classroom arrived via the fluent mouths of the students, who had to be restrained from spilling all the family beans.

|*

They could be excused as not knowing any better. Today it is just as apt to be the teacher who is afflicted with running-off-at-the-mouth disease and must air his/her political persuasions, religious (or anti-religious) beliefs and sexual preferences.

In one peculiar instance, our son's fourth grade parochial school class was advised of the desirability of atheism by an obviously misplaced teacher.

Things one might quite profitably confide to one's psychiatrist, clergyman, relatives or friends have become topics for casual conversation.

I have been bewitched, bothered and bewildered by acquaintances not friends, mind you who are pleased to tell me much more than I want to know about their marital problems, their spouse's shortcomings, and their status virginity-wise at the time of their marriage.

Instant celebrity awaits the ladies who kiss and yell, and the media dutifully provide publicity. Solemnly citing the public's "right to know," they provide truth in all its hues, including bilious green...

In fairness, it must be noted that if a news source stricken by scruples does try to avoid the explicit gesture or word, there are sure to be cries of censorship from those whose imaginations are unable to supply the missing link. The rights of a free people will surely be irredeemably damaged, they feel, if we cannot see the Rockefeller finger in all its glory, or hear the exact words spewed forth by Mr. Butz.

And all those expletives deleted from the famous tapes how can democracy survive if these things are not fully displayed?

Now, if a reporter comes upon

J pl

Forum

Opinion/ Analysis/ Commentary

Mr. Cartér talking to the White House pictures in the next year or so. t might be well if we were informed.

But is any purpose served by giving us such insight on a departed president, in his final days? Is it of national import if, in fact, that president's wife took to drink or if that couple occupied separate bedrooms?

If a public servant is cavorting in such a way as to become more a public nuisance, I want to know. If he is using public time or public money for his private pleasures, I want to know. But among the many things I don't want to know is whether he lusts after women, in his

heart or wherever. on his own time and at his own e expense

I also do not want to know that a priest is a homosexual, that a rock star is bisexual or that a doctorcum-tennis pro is trans-sexual But I DO know by golly along with everyone else with either eyes or

ears

Confession is supposedly good for the soul. But I wonder if the roving blabbermouths are confessing or bragging.

It seems clear that candor has become a major social disease. more easily communicated than any of the other known contagions I've begun thinking a lot more kindly of our Victorian ancestors. I guess I wouldn't want to go so far as to outlaw the mention of limbs, but I can't help thinking that a little hypocrisy might be better than none at all-

-

Elizabeth Wetzel is a free-lance writer in Medina