Description
Gossip in American politics has been a popular topic for centuries. SCORPION TONGUES examines the evolving relationship between politicians and the press and the blurring of the lines between politicians and celebrities. The book is supported by extensive research and written with an entertaining flair. Collins speculates on how gossip reflects the current moral compass of the time, noting how a rumor, like an unpredictable summer tornado, can flatten one reputation while a similar story passes over another with hardly a rustle.
From Thomas Jefferson to William Jefferson Clinton, SCORPION TONGUES is a popular history of gossip in American politics. Complete with wickedly delightful anecdotes of major and minor politicians and entertainers over the last 200 years, Gail Collins examines the evolving relationship between politicians and the press and the blurring of the lines between politicians and celebrities. Supported by extensive research and written with an entertaining flair, she speculates on how gossip reflects the current moral compass of the time, noting how a rumor, like an unpredictable summer tornado, can flatten one reputation while a similar story passes over another with hardly a rustle. "Hilariously readable" (The Economist), SCORPION TONGUES offers sinful scandals and mild hearsay for every taste.
If you think the stories about Bill Clinton are outrageous, Gail Collins has some tales that will
really burn your ears. Scandalous rumors have been a part of American politics since the days of George Washington's alleged mistresses and Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Grover Cleveland was rumored to have beaten his wife so severely during her pregnancy that their daughter was born with extensive brain damage. When Woodrow Wilson proposed to his second wife, a popular joke claimed, she was so surprised that she fell out of bed. And John Fremont's 1856 run for office was destroyed by repeated whisperings that he was, variously, illegitimate, Catholic, and a cannibal. Collins insightfully traces the relationship between gossip and government from an era when politics was the national pastime to the present blurring of the lines between politicians and celebrities.
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