American Journalism Review
Five years ago I posted Pat Craig’s complaint about -gate being attached to every scandal. “There are some tin-eared people in this business, who find it hugely funny to attach ‘gate to anything that even hints of scandal,” he wrote. “This gives you things like Shoplifter-gate and Income Tax Return Cheating-gate.” Of course, gate is still being used — and now it’s Rem Rieder who’s irked.
This has been an annoying practice for years. It’s knee-jerk. It’s easy. It’s boring. Worst of all, it suggests a false equivalency.
Watergate was serious business. It involved a pernicious and far-reaching abuse of power by the president of the United States and his minions.
Our most recent gate, the endlessly entertaining Weinergate, featuring Twitter-happy Rep. Anthony Weiner – not so much.
Discussing the nation’s financial crisis in 2008, Jonathan Wald said that the propensity to name every potential scandal a gate “tends to cheapen it.”
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