Abolish Gates

At least some good has come from the “cash for laws” scandal: journalists have not appended the word “gate” to its name.

In Politics and the English Language, Orwell wrote of how political writers seized on terms and squeezed every drop of life out of them until there was little left but the haggard husk of a long-dead cliché buried in a pauper’s grave, so despised had it become. The “-gate” suffix is just such a term.

At first, I am sure, it must have been quite witty to use it as a shorthand for scandal. Oh how the reading public must have chuckled, seeing that some otherwise unremarkable journalist had managed to fire up enough neurons to realise that he could brutally cleave the end of the name of a hotel from itself, and crudely sew it on to a relevant noun. Very droll.

There are few more obvious signs that a journalist is over-paid and underworked if the best phrase he can fashion is to take one word and slap “gate” on the end of it. It betrays a severe lack of imagination. If a writer cannot fashion a phrase, slogan or epithet that contains a bit of originality and flair, what is the point in hiring them? There are more people who want to be writers than there are actually opportunities, and those that cannot escape the comfort of their tired phrases should move aside to let those who can have an opportunity.

All the best comedians know that a joke, used too often, becomes as funny as a mortgage in arrears. This became the case with this poor subsitute for wit long ago. In the last few years we have had nannygate, yachtgate, betsygate, and cheriegate, to name but a few. Just typing those last few words was sufficient to plunge my stomach into convulsions of revulsion. What would happen if the US Secretary of Defence gets mired in scandal: will it be “Gatesgate”? What if it involves his gate? Will that be “Gates’gategate”? If we persist in letting our journalists off the hook for this barbarous crime against the language of Shakespeare, then this is the obvious unintelligible absurdity that we will be forced to read.

By way of a genuine example of the stultifying effect of this term’s use, take the business last year between the Shadow Chancellor and Peter Mandelson about some disparaging words and no donation on a yacht. It was widely referred to as “yachtgate”. How many more brain-cells would have been required to work out that since a yacht is something that floats on water, the more amusing alternative would have been on-the-water-gate? If cliché has to be used, it could at least be in a creative manner. Unfortunately, so cliche-addled were the hacks’ brains that they were unable to think beyond the formulaic application of “noun-gate” and coin an original term. The drug of the stock phrase had rendered them incapable of genuine wit.

Orwell reminded us that this corruption and ossification of the English language could be resisted, often with public ridicule. Let us endeavour to banish the “-gate” suffix from our political lexicon. Whenever the ugly term rears its vile head, let us name and shame the imaginationally-challenged, groan-inducing journo who mistook it for wit. Scandals deserve memorable names, not formulaic tripe.

Tagged as: cliche, gatewatch, journalism, scandal