THE TIPPING POINT: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference. - Review - book review

Washington Monthly, March, 2000 by Timothy Noah

Gladwell writes early on that the big change-the-world question his eclectic research raises is: "What can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?" This question is what makes Gladwell's book of great interest to political activists. Of course, trying to figure out the dynamics of an epidemic after the fact, though far from easy, is a lot easier than figuring them out before the epidemic occurs. (Baby boom readers will recall the public health scare in 1976 surrounding an anticipated "swine flu epidemic" that proved a dud.)

Gladwell's one feint in the direction of do-good-erism is a chapter where he recommends that the government stop funding anti-smoking ads aimed at keeping teens away from cigarettes, and instead focus on developing and distributing cigarettes with lower levels of nicotine and drugs like Zyban that could help addicts kick the nicotine habit. (Another interesting idea along these lines that Gladwell doesn't mention is forwarded by John Slade of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Slade says: Take out the tar, the stuff that makes cigarettes deadly in the first place. Then who cares how addictive they are?) Gladwell is a little too dismissive of the idea that public-service announcements can work: They were sufficiently effective in the late '60s that cigarette companies voluntarily pulled their own TV ads just to make the public service spots go away. Remember the coughing cowboy ad--where a Marlboro Man knock-off strode into a saloon, six-shooters at the ready, and dissolved into a seizure of hacking? Gladwell may well be right that his tactics would be more effective, but one senses in this part of the book something largely absent from the rest--an ideological distaste for certain categories of behavior-changing efforts (in this instance, one that smacks too much of ambitious government regulation).

Overall, though, and in spite of the fact that Gladwell's no liberal, The Tipping Point delivers a message that could help revitalize liberalism. The feeling is widespread that government action aimed at solving big problems is futile. But the thrust of Gladwell's book is that seemingly small gestures can have fantastically large and rapid outcomes. Mightn't government programs--strategically conceived and executed--constitute the sort of leverage he's talking about? Even though Gladwell doesn't have much to say about that in his important and compelling book, many others who are inspired by Robert Kennedy's famous words likely will.

TIMOTHY NOAH, a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly, writes Slate's "Chatterbox" column.