Why, why, why?
Why the hell do almost all scandals need to have the word gate shoved after them?
I mean Watergate, fair enough, that was the name of a place at the centre of that political scandal. And perhaps you can get away with using it a few mote times with something that was quite similar as a reference to it.
But adding gate to the end of any short word to do with a scandal is just plain sloppiness. It makes you wonder what journalists did before Watergate - or did no major scandals occur til then and Richard Nixon just let the permissive scandal society in?
I even found a list of gate scandals thats far from complete, but even that is a big list http://wapedia.mobi/en/List_of_scandals_with_%22-gate%22_suffix?t=1.#1.
Over the last few years we've had Jowell-GATE, Bertie-GATE, Sachs-GATE, Ferrari-GATE, Goodwin-GATE, Bonus-GATE, Lie-GATE and the latest (and what sparked off this rant) is Sleaze-GATE.
Of course there is the alternative that sometimes gets involved when large sums of money are given in return for something, Cash-for-?????, but I'll let that one slide as that doesn't get used so much.
Is it that much to ask for someone to come up with something new instead of recycling the same old 3o-odd year old label?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I wouldn't want to describe journos per se as lazy. After all they are valued members of the labour movement too :P
But the never-ending cutbacks in the print media and the pressure on 24 hour rolling news media to be the first with the story creates a culture of shortcuts and "laziness", which is why they're starting to lift stories - sometimes attributed, most often not - from blogs.
I'm afraid comrade until the revolution you're going to have to lump all the -gate nonsense!
i know i did think about that and it should have been in the rant - problem is i start typing something get distracted by something and get lazy with the post
I work with a film company and we've just found some extremely ironic footage of Jack Straw on the cutting room floor. It's currently being edited but I think it would be perfect for your readers. Is there an email address that I can use to send it to you?
Thank you!
Best wishes,
Rachel
rachel.bird@live.com
Post a Comment