EJ’s Pet Peeves: “Fill-in-the-blank-Gate”

This is the Watergate Building. Period.

This is the Watergate Building. Period.

I hate how whenever there is a scandal in this country we affix “GATE” to the end of it. I mean, clearly this stems from the Watergate scandal. But the Watergate is an actual building. It was the site of the criminal activities. ‘Gate’ itself is not a suffix that means scandal. [Scream] I can’t even pretend I haven’t been sucked in… Reading thru the post I wrote yesterday I used the term CRACK-gate to refer to Marion Barry’s arrest after that 1990 sting operation… So yes, I understand that this post is pretty damn hypocritical. But it still burns me whenever I hear it. It burns me more that I actually used it myself, but I’m not so hypocritical as to delete it from the other post. Doesn’t that count for sumthin’?

  • MONICA-gate (the blow job that ruined the economy)
  • TROOPER-gate (the Sarah Palin unwarranted firing controversy)
  • NIPPLE-gate (the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake superbowl incident)
  • BLAGO-gate (the IL governor/senate seat scandal)

There’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to scandals ending in ‘gate’. Who started this? I bet it’s the same idiot who decided that we should just add “PALOOZA” at the end of anything we wanted to describe as ‘big’ or ‘fun’.

I hate “PALOOZA” too. Blog to come.