Clarion Illustration by Christopher Pinkert
Nearly 40 years ago burglars were arrested in the Watergate hotel in Washington D.C. Five men were arrested for attempting to steal documents and install phone taps in the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

This began a two year investigation by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The two found that the burglars had ties to President Richard Nixon. Soon Nixon was tried for impeachment and resigned from office before being booted.

Since then, headline makers have used what is now just known as “Watergate” to sap all of their creative brainpower when giving a title to any scandal. They just simply put dash-gate at the end of a word and suddenly the story has an inconceivably clever name.

This is incredibly boring journalism. It’s lazy. It insults the intelligence of the American public. It’s like saying, “People are too dumb to understand it’s a scandal if we don’t put gate at the end of a single syllable word.”

I have found a few examples of how using the tantalizing suffix has really dressed up a few headlines.

From the sports world we have these fine examples of journalism:

Spygate: The New England Patriots recorded the New York Jets hand signals during a 2007 game in order to pick up their defensive signals. They could have also used: Patriotgate, Cheatergate, or my personal favorite Belichickgate.

Tripgate: New York Jets coach Sal Alosi trips a Miami Dolphins player during a kickoff, forcing the player to fall to the ground and removing him from the play. I would have went with “coach trips player during game-gate” just to be sure everyone knew what I was talking about.

Bountygate: In 2012 New Orleans Saints coaches were suspended after allegedly offering bounties for injuring players during games. Remove them from the league-gate would have been my choice.

Sodagate: In 2013 New Jersey Nets head coach Jason Kidd is accused of spilling his soda on the ground at the end of a game to force a timeout after the team runs out of other options: Kiddgate, Timeoutgate, or possibly even Spillgate.

From the world of Politics, just ripe with dash-gates:

Monicagate: A single gate could not encompass the entire scandal that involved a sexual relationship between President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. The media got creative with this one. Other names used by the media were: Lewinskygate, Tailgate, Sexgate, and Zippergate. For brevity they should have just combined them in to MonicaLewinskyTailSexZippergate.

Weinergate: In 2011 Congressman Anthony Weiner is linked to lewd photos of his “Weiner” on his Twitter account. When running for office in 2013 Weingergate made a return as he was found to be sexting a woman. This name was just funny and dominated the news for a long time. I don’t think anyone will ever forget Weinergate.

A couple I made up for this letter.

GoldenGate: Covert engineers in San Francisco secretly devise and erect a bridge.

Gate-gate: A Madison College student brings to light lazy journalism in an attempt to inspire those around him to come up with better titles and quit using monosyllabic words with a hinged barrier used to close an opening in a wall or fence attached to the end of them.

If you look back at the original Watergate under the context that dash-gate means scandal, then Nixon must have been impeached because of some awful use of water. Did he spill water on the only copy of the Declaration of Independence? Did he spit water on a foreign dignitary? Surely, Nixon was “In over his head.” Nixon “found himself in hot water.” “Nixon’s political career drowns in Watergate.” Just a couple of suggestions.