gushiness

In “What Does Tom Cruise Really Eat for Breakfast?” a meditation on the gushiness of celebrity journalism, the writer Elizabeth Kaye noted that “the most common type of celebrity journalist celebrates and admires anyone who has not committed a murder since breakfast.”

Doris Lessing, for instance, who had inscribed a copy of “The Golden Notebook” “to Ted and Sylvia,” “spurned” Plath when Plath visited her a month or so before her suicide, “put off by Plath’s effusive praise and American gushiness,” and asked the mutual friend who had brought her by “not to bring Sylvia back.”

In describing these qualities, Weller — author of “Girls Like Us,” a group biography of Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon — sometimes creeps up to the edge of gushiness.

Add the injustice of being called out for the gushiness of her Pelosi interview with the injustice of being called out for palling around with the powerful people you’re meant to cover, and it was all just too much for Dowd.

I think what worked to counteract the gushiness were the drag balls themselves—a showcase for ruthless takedowns and vicious competition, the internal processing of the shame and disgust the rest of the world heaps on this community.