Can we please get past this "-gate" convention every time some scandal occurs?

Whitewatergate was only mildly clever because it at least had the word water in it. All the rest of them are stupid and need to go away.

Agreed. You may as well try and stop the wind.

…and Fellategate would have been better.

I nominate Y.A.R.S. – Yet Another Right-wing Screwup.

It’s hardly a surprise that the various -gates listed in the OP are either trivial nonsense blown out of proportion or genuine nation-threatening screwups perpetuated by the folks on the right.

And yet it still hadn’t caught on completely at the time of Abscam.

Whitewatergate was a right-wing screwup…how exactly?

Aside from Kenneth Starr’s bungling of the investigation, of course.

Actually, he was responding to post #36, which was still about trying to find a different name for “Nipplegate”.

And of course, it was so clearly a Right Wing Conspiracy[sup]TM[/sup] that caused Justin to expose Janet’s nipple… The plan was set in motion years before. It was even being plotted during the Reagan administration.

Ronnie: “Well, George… Don’t tell Nancy, but I really want to see Janet Jackson’s tits. Do you think you can make this happen for me?”

George: “Um… yep… not sure I can do it. Wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture. But I’ll mention it to my son…”

Originally Posted by Governor Quinn
Not really, Koreagate came in 1976.
And yet it still hadn’t caught on completely at the time of Abscam.
Was “Koreagate” actually called that at the time? Or was it retrospectively called that? I feel like that if I had titled my OP with “What is the fallout of the Wardrobe Malfunction two years later?” no blood would have been spilled here.

Oh, man, I hate the ‘gate’ thing. Please, people, come with something else already.

Since the Clintons were found innocent of the accusations of real estate hanky-panky vis-a-vis Whitewater, that falls under “trivial nonsense blown out of proportion,” with an order of partisan witchhunt on the side.

Heaven forbid if the Dems start engaging in such partisan nonsense as well… :rolleyes:

Eh…Screw’em all.

Yeah, but “Iran-Contra,” which has become the dominant moniker for that business, is really pedestrian.
I strongly favored another moniker, which was bandied around a bit at the time “Iran Amok”. It was clever, and captured how silly and how out of control the NSC and the Reagan Administration was at the time (A cake shaped like a Bible???), but alas, it didn’t stick.

Sua

Why mess with success?

So if some farmers in northern Pennsylvania got into trouble over misuse of water from Lake Erie for watering their crops, would they call it “Erie-gate?”

The solution is simple, if we kill off all the Boomers (who are so enamoured of the term) then the whole “gate” thing disappears. I would suggest doing so, but it would probably violate a rule or something like that.

Kill all the boomers… in that gen[eration]o-cide, or vermicide?

The earliest reference to the Tongsun Park scandal being called “Koreagate” that I can find on Lexis-Nexis is from the Washington Post, on July 2, 1977. There are 61 other references to it as such between then and December 1980 on Lexis-Nexis.