How ‘Gate’ Became The Syllable Of Scandal

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1417165
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How ‘Gate’ Became The Syllable Of Scandal

The problem with appending the suffix gate to describe scandals is that if it were applied retroactively, Nixon’s scandal would be Watergategate.

There’s a similar problem with the annoying word workaholic — it borrows syllables from alcohol. If a person addicted to alcohol is an alcoholic, then a person addicted to work should be a workic.

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Well, duh…

every other use after Watergate was a copy cat hyperbolization of the particular scandal.

A lack of imagination beginning to creep into the American press and media.

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Another distinction that wasn’t mentioned here is that Watergate actually brought down the President of the United States. No other political scandal in the U.S. ever came close to having that much impact. Teapot Dome, for all of its fanfare, only came out after Harding was dead and didn’t affect the Coolidge administration in any significant way.

Chappaquiddick might have prevented Ted Kennedy from becoming President, but it never derailed his Senate career. All of the other “Gates” to have come out since only ever amounted to a lot of media bluster and then… nothing. It’s as though the media wants so badly to relive the Watergate scandal when a major politician was actually held accountable for their actions and the press seemed to actually matter.

Those were the days.

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Scandalgate.

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Excerpt

In fact, this degradation of scandal may have been the point of “-gate’s” creation. Former Nixon speechwriter cum New York Times columnist William Safire was the first to detach “gate” from “water” as early as September 1974, and he went on to coin many more “gates,” including some of the biggies: Briefingate, Travelgate, Whitewatergate, among a dozen or so others.

As Columbia Journalism School’s Michael Schudson and others have argued, Safire’s cornucopia of “-gates” was an attempt to distance himself from Nixon and minimize Watergate as just one of myriad quotidian bureaucratic indiscretions and silly tabloid scandals. Safire basically admitted as much years later, saying his favorite “-gates” were for minor scandals, like Doublebillingsgate, which involved some contractors double-billing the government.

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By exhibiting an uncharacteristic sense of humor on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In, Dick Nixon, who had delivered the maudlin Checker’s Speech as VP, and said goodbye to politics after losing the California Gubernatorial election (Telling the Press and TV News “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.”) actually launched his come back and his successful campaign for US President.

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Martha Mitchell might like to have a word with you about that. hahahaha

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William Safire, yes.

Nixon’s Revenge at the NY Times.

Roger Ailes was Nixon’s Revenge writ large and the gift that keeps on giving, long after his putrid FOX career as propagandist in chief, chief Bacchanalian, and originator of FOX’s tradition of sexual harassment and “hiring criteria.”

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Benghazigate. Waterghazi. Benwaterghazigate.

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Yeah, she was a media circus all by herself at the time. Of course, her antics pale in comparison to those of our last President and his family, but those were simpler times.

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Yeah, “-gate” for political stuff, much like “-athon” for athletic endeavors. It’s getting so that we no longer have an American English “language” – you know, with “words” and sometimes even “grammar”, but instead, just a collection of roots, suffixes, and prefixes which can be slammed together any way the speaker/writer wants and results in … COMMUNICATION! Or something.

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I’m sensing the beginnings of suffixgate.

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She was also manhandled, locked up, lied to by her husband and treated like she was crazy when she wasn’t. And basically it was because she was telling the truth. So those might have been the days for the country but they were damn hard on her. That’s all I meant. Just a little aside.

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Suffixohilics unite

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Negate!

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Is that a horse racing scandal?

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No that’s Startingate

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The scandal of these fake scandals always irritates me. You might call it irrigate.

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