Little did the architects behind the office/hotel complex at the heart of the Nixon affair (doesn’t sound right does it?) know what an impact the building’s name would have on the British media.
It’s a legacy which has given British newspaper journalists an easy way to coin a name for the latest ‘scandal’ (scandal defined in its broadest sense: we have Flakegate, after all).
But when it comes to last week’s BBC outrage no-one seems to know which gate to stick with:
Media Guardian alone refers to Sachsgate, Granddaughtergate and Manuelgate.
We’ve seen Rossgate from the Telegraph, Brandgate from the Independent. For readers’ sake, since the coverage really doesn’t seem to be letting up, let’s have an agreed gate.
And some consistency please: should the named gate namesake be the perpetrators, or the victims of the ‘scandal’? That particular detail often bothers me: we’ve had Queengate, but also Cherie and Camillagate (Nipplegate of Justin Timberlake fame is a particular favourite).
Reuters and most of the papers/blogs are going with Manuelgate but my vote’s with ‘whatnewanglecanwepossiblytakenowgate’ (she says, fully aware of the irony as she pens her own tenuous angle for this blog post).
Mainly because Rossgate could lead to confusion for the poor pupils at this school in Hemel Hempstead.
Any gates on this particular story I’ve missed? For those that care and are thinking of writing their Masters thesis on the subject, there’s actually a Wikipedia page dedicated to ‘scandal-gates’ (which actually already lists Manuelgate, fyi).
There was also