Friday, October 13, 2006

Scandal names: Wishing the gate was closed

I keep waiting and hoping for -gate to lose its punch ... sure we heard Plamegate a lot, but when Libby got indicted, it was (beginning to look a lot like) Fitzmas. And there have been various other clever scandal names. So, when the Foley thing broke, I was hoping for something better than Foleygate, but that gets over over a million g-hits already. Wonkette's brilliant Cocktober Surprise hasn't broken into the headlines for obvious reasons, but surely there's some creativity left out there. Mastergate (I think Jon Stewart uses it and I know Stephanie Miller does) keeps the gate, but at least goes beyond the name + gate pattern that I've grown so tired of.

I was inspired to ponder this after seeing the lamest possible option in something about current polling on congress races, where the journalist used Foley's folly. My initial reaction was that this was parallel to Tony Snow's comments about 'naughty e-mails', but then Merriam-Webster does give this second definition of folly: "criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct". There's also the obsolete related meaning "lewd behavior".

Update Oct. 17: Forgot to list Stephanie Miller's "Cage aux Foley".

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