I received this post card in the mail from a real estate company. They were trying to promote word of mouth as a means for increasing their sales but instead they used a famous old Norman Rockwell poster that was meant to illustrate the insidious nature of gossip. (https://tinyurl.com/Chain-of-Gossip). So, now it has become a strange game of broken telephone played across generations. It kind of reminds me of what the media has become - an arena of gossipy insinuation. A parade of pundits is presented and asked to speculate about what certain events mean and where things will lead. The accuracy of their predictions is never really evaluated or the expertise they bring to the table. Being credible is a matter of delivery and context. More important is being entertaining. The slippery slope we have been sliding down began at the marriage of Ronald Reagan and cable TV. To compete with the plethora of entertainment options sound bites had to become more tantalizing - otherwise viewers would tune out. And many have. A shockingly uninformed populace is making decisions that affect the global balance of power. The initial message  - filtered through a succession of unreliable narrators -  soon becomes unrecognizable .