CALUMNY: OUTDATED WORD, EVER-PRESENT DEED

False stories abound. In the food world, it’s earthworms in fast food, and that old standby, cat and dog meat at Chinese restaurants.  In the political realm, it’s vicious blood sport. Victims include the late senator John McCain, accused of fathering an illegitimate child with a woman of color, and, in 2016,  Hillary Clinton. One particularly sordid story claimed that she ran a pizza restaurant child sex ring.

Internationally, one of the major fabrications owed its existence to the  well-oiled propaganda machine of the Soviet Union. The big lie: AIDS was really a biological weapon developed by the Pentagon.  Its aim: kill gays and blacks. The story even got a mention on the CBS evening news.  

The tactic of reputation-smearing has a clumsy, now little-used, name: calumny.  The term’s usage peaked in the mid-17th century. The more common synonym, “slander,” is also in decline.

We thus find ourselves in an ironic situation.  As calumny/slander become more and more prominent, the words are less and less invoked. As the act rises in prominence, the pejorative label drops away.

When contemporaries think of “vice” they tend to think of sexual peccadilloes. We are sort of like the judge in a

murder case who, faced with lascivious testimony, admonished the witness that “this is a trial about murder. It doesn’t have anything to do with morals.” Or we might think of how the term “virtue” has moved from indicating probity of character associated with the male (vir in Latin), to signifying chastity in the female.  

Given such a trajectory,  “calumny” was bound to be displaced as one of the great vices. Yes, surprising as it may be, calumny was once near,  or even at, the top of the vice heap, a bad heap, and nothing to be proud of, but at the top nonetheless.

Phrased as “bearing false witness” it’s in the decalogue (the 8th or 9th commandment, depending on the list used).   When Shakespeare wished to create a Satanic character he

depicted, not a murderer, not a thief, but Iago, whose tactic was calumny. Way before Shakespeare, Plato had his hero Socrates complain about the slanderers whose lies culminated in his trial.  After Shakespeare, in Tom Jones, Henry Fielding introduced the particularly nasty fellow, Blifil.  The evil perpetrated by Blifil? Slandering Tom Jones.

Lest readers not get the point, Fielding added this none too subtle editorial. ““Vice hath not, I believe, a more abject slave; society produces not a more odious vermin; nor can the devil receive a guest more worthy of him, nor possibly more welcome to him, than a slanderer. ... for slander is a more cruel weapon than a sword, as the wounds which the former gives are always incurable.”

A little known 17th century thinker, Marie Le Jars de Gournay, articulated an ethics in which calumny was identified as the worst of the vices. Why? Fielding provides one answer: the damage to one’s character is “incurable”.  Also, societies are held together by the invisible thread of trust. Trust and a healthy skepticism (seeking evidence and following its lead) can, and should, coexist. Slander, by contrast, slays trust.  

In the food realm, people seeking guidance face this trust-investigate tension all the time.  Reports and

studies conflict. The disinformation called advertising is rampant. Absolute certitude remains mostly out of reach.  Some trust, some commitment based on strong yet imperfect evidence will always be needed. Such an inevitable need for trust opens the door for calumny to do its dirty work.  

There’s no going back to the era of Marie Le Jars de Gournay.  In that era, personal honor (“I certainly won’t do anything that would dishonor me”) stood as the lodestar by which to guide lives.  Despite some advantages, this older setting, it’s worth remembering, had its own problems. Witness honor killings and duels.

There is no need to go backward.  We can, instead, mix and blend the best of past and present. We can rearrange our hierarchy of vices and virtues.  Maybe, in so doing, we can come to make slander less of a blood sport and more of a familiar term.