I know it all started with Watergate in the '70s because the scandal was first discovered in a building in Washington called Watergate. But sense then there has been Spygate, Troopergate... everything goes back to the scandal 40 years ago. There have been scandals throughout history, why do we keep referencing that one.
Was it really that big, or has the media run out of ideas on what to call a problem?
Yes to both parts of your question. It really was that big. And the media have run out of ideas. (I say "media have" rather than "media has" because "media" is a plural. You can look it up.)
The Watergate scandal led to Richard Nixon's resignation. That was huge. No American president before or since has abdicated with the hounds at his heels. Subsequent presidents have certainly committed crimes for which they should have been forced out of office, but history has not zapped them the way it zapped Nixon. Some post-Watergate scandals have been less significant than the one that brought Nixon down, but news media hungry for audience have often been inclined to over-dramatize events.
Not all scandals end in -gate. Teapot Dome Scandal. Black Sox Scandal. Yazoo Land Scandal. Lewinsky Scandal. Whitewater.
Watergate is simply the one folks now want to use as the precedence. Kinda like Columbine, school shootings and murders are now all Columbine-style. And yet at the same time Columbine occurred there were other school murders that ended up getting glossed over. And those massacres that occurred before Columbine become ignored. Why aren't school massacres called Bath-style after the 1927 Bath School murders in Bath, Michigan? 45 killed compared to just 12 at Columbine. Of that number, 39 were grade school students.
Of course folks can say, well the murder was a member of the school board and Columbine was carried out by students. But Columbine is now considered the fourth worst school murder. Virginia Tech now is number 2 (and is post Columbine so we ignore it). At number 3, with two more killed than at Columbine, and carried out by a single student, is 1966's U of Texas massacre. So why not then call school shootings U of Texas-style.
Well, Columbine is deemed the worst high-school shooting. But wait, Virginia Tech is a college/university and when the Virginia Tech shootings took place the news was calling it a Columbine-style. Meaning it doesn't really matter of the massacre occurred at a college/university, high school, or elementary/grade school. Columbine is now to be considered the big name in school massacres even though it has never been the number one school massacre.
And the same thing goes for 1972's Watergate. It has become the big name in scandals which leads to the use of gate in many scandals in the last thirty-six years. Whether or not Watergate was or remains the biggest scandal in history, folks say "Oh it's a Watergate-style scandal."
Its the only time a sitting president ever left office( while still alive), so it was pretty big, but I think a lazy media also plays a part;)
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