-gate, a mild rant.

[Chinny]

I'm not sure about you guys, but I am thoroughly sick of every scandal no matter how slight being suffixed with the word gate. There are about three different -gate "scandals" on this site at the moment, with only the continuing Ferrari/McLaren rubbish coming anywhere near being a true scandal.
It is not clever, and 35 years after the Watergate scandal it is not new. I also feel that it takes away from the significance of the so called leaders of the free world being outed as nothing more than petty criminals.
Unless Bill Gates is caught with a dead rent boy in a seedy motel, -Gate should be retired from journalists lexicons in favour of some proper reporting of the facts at hand.

[Editor]

[Karlos]

I vaguely remember somebody referring to Schumi's incident at Monaco last year as Rascasse-gate, but I caould be wrong. In any case, if it was on the forum (which I think it was) I hardly think you can blame Pitpass for the title.

Spy-gate is the second one, can't think of a third.
_________________
Red Bull - Gives you Championships.

[Editor]

Chinny refers to three different 'gates' on the site, not the forum.

He then writes: "Gate should be retired from journalists lexicons in favour of some proper reporting of the facts at hand."

I want to know the three 'gate' stories on Pitpass that he refers to.

[Chinny]

Stepneygate, Alonsogate are both on the main site in recent feature articles and news items, I'm sorry but the third escapes me at the moment, I'd actually forgotten about this thread. There was a whole article about Ferrari's gates as well.
I would just like to note though that I meant the media in general overuse this suffix, not only this site. As I noted earlier I feel like it takes away from the importance of the original scandal by using it for every little scandal. Perhaps it's not a major thing in the UK, but it gets used way to much down under and I was just all gated out.

[Editor]

Alonsogate has never - I repeat never been used on this site.

Stepneygate has only ever been used by Mike Lawrence (once) and Glen Crompton (once)

When Crompo used it, it was to mock the expression, hence the title of the article was:

"Forget Stepneygate, what about the front gate?"

The introduction to Mike's piece read: "In his latest piece, Mike Lawrence ponders the lack of serious chatter on the F1 grapvine regarding the sabotage/espionage saga, or Stepneygate, as some, including Mike, insist on calling it."

[BigG80]

I have to say that I agree with Chinny about the terms over use in the media in general. Obviously it hasn't been as overused on Pitpass but on other sites, it is ludicrous. James Allen had a column on the ITV site where he described the Monaco 06 incident as Rascasse-gate.

[White Lightning]

Note to all posters:

I've seen it mentioned once. Please, please, please don't turn this latest one into "Renaultgate."

[benwillfordjohnson]

agreed, this is turning into gate-gate
put a filter on the word 'gate' so it changes it to 'situation'