John McDonnell\/The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAs with other infamous episodes, such as the Teapot Dome scandal or the Chappaquiddick tragedy, the event would come to be known by the place where it occurred.<\/span><\/p>\nBut unlike those two precedents, the Watergate Office Building would be immortalized as the catchall term for political scandal.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWatergate,\u201d in this context, is an example of metonymy. A part \u2013 the site of the break-in \u2013 comes to stand for the larger whole: the illegal acts committed by Nixon\u2019s administration, as well as the subsequent investigation into them.<\/span><\/p>\nMetonymy is a common way in which English is fortified with new vocabulary \u2013 think of \u201cthe Pentagon\u201d as a stand-in for the U.S. military, or \u201cHollywood\u201d as a way to refer to the motion picture industry.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat\u2019s unusual about Watergate is that one syllable splintered off to become the universally recognized designator for political malfeasance. When boozy government-sponsored parties that broke Covid-19 lockdown rules came to light in the U.K., the scandal quickly became known as \u201cpartygate.\u201d But the syllable has also migrated beyond politics, becoming a tag for wrongdoing of virtually any kind.<\/span><\/p>\nOther splinters have also been pressed into service to create new words. For example, \u201c-athon,\u201d from \u201cmarathon,\u201d can emphasize an event\u2019s long duration \u2013 telethon, dance-a-thon, and hackathon. Similarly, \u201c-aholic,\u201d from \u201calcoholic,\u201d denotes an addiction: shopaholic, workaholic, sexaholic.<\/span><\/p>\nBut in terms of sheer productivity, \u201c-gate\u201d has no peer. Wikipedia\u2019s list of -gates has over 260 entries.<\/span><\/p>\nDuring its remarkable career, it has often been wielded as a linguistic cudgel, and few other four-letter strings have such power to stigmatize and to demonize.<\/span><\/p>\nThe early years<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nA year after the Watergate break-in, the humor magazine National Lampoon referenced \u201cVolgagate\u201d \u2013 a fictitious Russian scandal \u2013 in its August 1973 issue. This seems to have been the first use of -gate as a generic label for a political scandal.<\/span><\/p>\nA month later, Newsweek characterized a scheme to peddle cheap Bordeaux as \u201cWinegate.\u201d Its extension to viniculture suggested that -gate might have a life outside of politics.<\/span><\/p>\nBut the real popularizer of -gate was William Safire, Nixon\u2019s former speechwriter. As a conservative political columnist with The New York Times for over 30 years, Safire created or promoted many such terms. These included Billygate, Lancegate and Briefingate to describe scandals that emerged during Jimmy Carter\u2019s presidency. He also popularized Travelgate and Whitewatergate during the Clinton years.<\/span><\/p>\nAfter Nixon resigned, his former speechwriter, William Safire, deployed \u2018gate\u2019 as a suffix to describe various scandals that engulfed the Democratic Party. Bettmann\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\nThese episodes didn\u2019t rise to the seriousness of Watergate, of course. But by making them into -gates, Safire was implying that Democrats could be just as corrupt as Republicans.<\/span><\/p>\nApart from Safire\u2019s inventions, few episodes from the 1970s to the 1990s were referred to as -gates. Only about 10% of the terms on Wikipedia\u2019s list date from the 20th century. Even major political scandals of the period only occasionally received this epithet.<\/span><\/p>\nConsider the Reagan administration\u2019s scheme to use Iranian arm sales to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. All the attributes for a Watergate-style comparison were present: illegal activity, conspiracy and an attempted cover-up.<\/span><\/p>\nDespite this, The New York Times referred to the episode as \u201cReagangate\u201d just twice, \u201cContragate\u201d only 11 times and \u201cIrangate\u201d about 100 times. In contrast, the paper used the phrase \u201cIran-Contra\u201d nearly 6,000 times in its coverage.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Opening the \u2018flood-gates\u2019<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nIn the new millennium, however, -gate became totally unmoored from politics.<\/span><\/p>\nIt has been employed to describe kerfuffles in almost every field of human endeavor \u2013 sports (Astrogate), journalism (Rathergate), technology (Antennagate) and entertainment (Nipplegate).<\/span><\/p>\nAlready in 2022, hashtags referring to a number of events \u2013 such as #slapgate and #lettergate \u2013 have trended on Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\nFor those who value precision in language, this as a problem \u2013 because if everything is a scandal, then nothing is.<\/span><\/p>\nConsider \u201cPonytailgate.\u201d In 2015, New Zealand\u2019s prime minister, over a period of several months, repeatedly tugged on the ponytail of a young caf\u00e9 waitress. He persisted despite repeated requests from both the waitress and the prime minister\u2019s wife that he stop. Such behavior is boorish at best.<\/span><\/p>\nBut does it belong in the same category as events involving corruption, a conspiracy, or a cover-up?<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>A pleasing sounding suffix<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nIt may be that -gate is used because nothing better has come along. Replacement terms have enjoyed only limited popularity.<\/span><\/p>\nThe splinter \u201c-ghazi\u201d arose in reference to the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya. It was occasionally deployed against the Obama administration. For example, when President Obama wore a tan suit to a press conference, \u201cBeigeghazi\u201d was born. But -ghazi probably failed as a suffix for scandal because it was too much of a mouthful.<\/span><\/p>\nThis can be seen in the 2014 debate over what to call former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie\u2019s lane closure scandal. Should it be \u201cBridgeghazi\u201d or \u201cBridgegate\u201d \u2013 or even \u201cBridgeaquiddick\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\nBridgegate won out \u2013 undoubtedly because it was shorter and simpler. Resonance also seems to apply for other scandals: \u201cDeflategate\u201d simply sounds better than \u201cBallghazi\u201d as a name for the New England Patriots football scandal.<\/span><\/p>\nOne size fits all?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nNot content with its domination of English, -gate has also wormed its way into other languages, such as German, Serbo-Croatian, Greek and Hungarian.<\/span><\/p>\nBut like most successful trends, the widespread use of -gate has engendered significant backlash. As with Ponytailgate, many of these coinages fail to differentiate the mundane from the momentous. This invites accusations of journalistic laziness, in which events are merely lumped together rather than analyzed.<\/span><\/p>\nIn addition, overuse has transformed -gate constructions from the somewhat clever coinages of Safire\u2019s day into the tired clich\u00e9s of today. It can also be difficult to tell when a -gate construction is intended ironically, which makes interpretation difficult.<\/span><\/p>\nFinally, sometimes shorthand is just too short. \u201cReagangate\u201d may have failed as a label for Iran-Contra because it wasn\u2019t specific enough. The term could have referred to any of several different episodes during Reagan\u2019s eight-year administration.<\/span><\/p>\nTerrell Owens, during an October 2002 Monday Night Football game, took a Sharpie out of his sock to sign a football after scoring a touchdown. Tami Tomsic\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\nAt the other extreme, the same -gate has been applied to very different controversies. \u201cSharpiegate\u201d referred to Terrell Owens\u2019 signing of a football in 2002. But it was also trotted out for President Donald Trump\u2019s edit of a map of Hurricane Dorian\u2019s path in 2019. And in 2020, it became associated with allegations of ballot fixing in Arizona.<\/span><\/p>\nBut even half a century later, -gate is still finding gainful employment in politics. It was used, for example, to tag several Trump scandals, from Russiagate to Ukrainegate. And President Joe Biden has had to contend with Kabulgate and #formulagate.<\/span><\/p>\nNo president has resigned since Nixon, arguably in the face of worse scandals than Watergate.<\/span><\/p>\nAs with the wear and tear on an overused suffix, one has to wonder: Have voters become numb to political scandal, too?<\/span><\/p>\nRoger J. Kreuz<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Associate Dean and Professor of Psychology,
\nUniversity of Memphis<\/p>\n
\nMauritius Times ePaper Friday 15 March 2024<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Roger J. Kreuz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":39849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25],"tags":[41388,13083,13097,5845,805,18427,44276,33788,44275],"class_list":["post-39848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-corporate-scandals","tag-language","tag-linguistics","tag-media","tag-richard-nixon","tag-sex-scandals","tag-sociolinguistics","tag-watergate","tag-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Gate.jpg?fit=640%2C346&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-amI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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