GOING TO A GO-GO
The practice of attaching a “-gate” suffix to every new scandal after Watergate began as an attempt by a diehard Nixon speechwriter – William Safire – to trivialize the importance of the original Watergate scandal. Safire was later employed by the New York Times (some things never change), so he had ample opportunity to stick the “gate” label on whatever took his fancy. Typically, the chattering classes followed his lead, and so it has gone, for nearly five decades.
For most of the 45 years since Nixon resigned, he held the title of Worst President Ever. He fended off challenges from Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, but Donald Trump is beating him like a drum. Trump hasn’t (yet) begun to compete on the international scene with OG monsters like Nero and Caligula; medieval monsters like Vlad the Impaler and Torquemada; or the scurvy scum of the 20th century – the Hitlers, Stalins, and Pol Pots. But he’s the worst this country has had since George Washington took his first oath of office in 1789.
Therefore, I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, declare that a leader as awful as Donald Trump deserves his own unique scandal suffix. I wish I could claim I thought of switching out “gate” with “a-lago,” after Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, but the idea dates back at least to May, 2017, with several Twitter users apparently arriving at the term independently at about the same time.
“Ukrainegate” is broke. “Ukraine-a-Lago” is woke.