Classifying Celebrity Gossip

Erma Bombeck once said, “Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.” Every day, Americans buy magazines like US Weekly, People and Star or visit websites like Hollywood Gossip and omg! to get their celebrity gossip fix. For the sake of clarity, rather than differentiating between celebrity news and celebrity gossip, which would arguably be an impossible task, we will consider all material presented in the media about celebrities to be gossip. The sheer quantity of celebrity gossip in the media might make it seem impossible to apply any sort of logic or classification to it, but celebrity gossip can generally be classified based upon the content or subject matter it addresses.

One category of celebrity gossip is romance. This is such a major focus of entertainment news, terms have been invented to refer to major celebrity couples; the fact that “Brangelina,” a combination of the first names of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and “TomKat,” the combination of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, are expressions in the common American vernacular demonstrates Americans’ great interest in the romantic lives of the stars. There are entire sections of magazines and websites dedicated to gossip about which celebrities are dating, getting engaged, breaking up, or getting divorced. While romance-related gossip is often unreliable, there is no doubt that there is a market for this type of celebrity gossip.

The public is not interested in couples alone but also the fruits of those unions: celebrity offspring. As any celebrity gossip-follower can attest, pregnancy is very “in” right now. Articles and programs speculate about which Hollywood stars are pregnant or wish they were; Jennifer Aniston and her Friends costar Cour...

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...edia tells us which celebrities will be acting in it and maybe even which actors missed out on the leading role. Recent examples of celebrity professional gossip would include the recent break-up of alternative band “Fall Out Boy,” and speculation about what is next for Conan O’Brien who recently left NBC when his time slot was given back to Jay Leno.

Of course, there are some items of celebrity gossip that span more than one category, like Tiger Woods’ recently revealed infidelity which has led to separation from his wife, legal issues and negative effects on his career in golf. However, despite the fact that almost nothing is “off-limits” to tabloids, almost all celebrity gossip falls into the categories of romance, children, appearance, legal problems and career.

Works Cited

“Erma Bombeck Quotes.” Brainy Quote. Brainy Media, n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2010.