Politicians love it, the MSM (mainstream media) loves it, and apparently the general public loves it. So, what is the most overused and clichéd political term in the last few decades? The suffix “-gate”. For some reason every single new political scandal, no matter how big or small, needs to be renamed by the MSM to {insertscandalhere}gate. This all obviously stems from the original “gate”, Watergate, and it was funny, witty, and original for a while there, but now it is just plain overused. How overused, you might ask? Wikipedia has a list of 60 scandals which have been given a “-gate” suffix, and that isn’t including the original Watergate. The most recent excessive abuse of this politicized suffix, Sarah Palin’s home grown “Troopergate“, is repeated countless times a day over the last few weeks on every single MSM outlet to the point where a scandal that should have just stayed localized to Alaska is now a household term across the united states.
When will it end? If the MSM has their way, probably never. They seem to love the -gate suffix. Networks like MSNBC and CNN seem to use it more than common words like “the”. What I’m proposing is that we give some dignity back to the English language and instead of just creating a new word for every single scandal ever, how about just going back to using the word “scandal”. Troopergate has nothing to do with gates, so why don’t we just refer to it as something more descriptive like, say, “Governor Palin’s State Trooper Scandal”. Sure, it’s a bit more bulky, but every time the MSM says it that’s just five fewer seconds of worthless filler.
