In the first few hours of June 17, 1972, a security guard at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters discovered a group of five men who had broken into the building. At 1:47 a.m. he called the metro police, who found lock picks, over $2,000 in cash, surveillance equipment and small gas guns, amongst other supplies. The five suspects were arrested, prompting an extensive investigation from two Washington Post reporters that would eventually lead to the resignation of a president and the transformation of journalism as we knew it.
The location of the break-in and the DNC headquarters is known as Watergate.
Along with being the location of the now recognized scandal, Watergate, a building complex in Washington, D.C., also contained offices and residential apartments. In the 1970s, however, the name became synonymous with the corruption at the hands of the federal government and its suffix – gate – has now become popularized as a word to use in times of scandal.
The first use of -gate to describe a political scandal appears to have been published by humor magazine National Lampoon when describing a false Soviet conspiracy in August 1973. The scandal was called Volgagate, and it initiated a series of hundreds of more -gate controversies.
A number of other scandals and controversies followed, some more subdued than others.
When Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship was exposed in 1998, multiple names were used to describe the scandal. Lewinskygate, Tailgate, Sexgate and Zippergate were all used to refer to the events that resulted in the impeachment of former President Clinton.
In 2014, an extensive harassment campaign targeted women in gaming, showing, for perhaps the first time, the effects of hate speech online. Gamergate arose from an angry ex-boyfriend posting about his breakup with a female video game designer, which led to trolls on a multitude of sites contriving a conspiracy about her. Some say Gamergate laid the groundwork for radical white wing violence and ideology in the mainstream.
When singer Ariana Grande licked a donut on a display tray in a Southern California donut shop in the summer of 2015 while also declaring “I hate America,” the security camera footage went viral. Donutgate trended all over social media, prompting an apology from Grande via YouTube. Grande’s career was not ruined, though it remains an embarrassing blemish from her past due to the buzz in the 2010s.
Envelopegate was popularized when “La La Land” was announced as the winner of Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards in 2017. A couple minutes later, however, the real winner, “Moonlight” was announced to the audience, prompting chaos on social media.
Despite an absence of victims or physical evidence, in 2023, a conspiracy arose alleging a pedophilia ring involving leaders of the Democratic Party inside of a Washington pizza restaurant, dubbed Pizzagate. Some say Pizzagate also served as a predecessor of QAnon, a right-wing political movement rooted in the theory that the government is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles.
The four letter word makes it easy to assign a quick name to any conspiracy or scandal that finds its place on the internet. The trendy slang drives for a virality it may not have gained prior, and the ability to spread quickly and efficiently across the internet onto the screens of millions makes the legacy of Watergate so fascinating. Did Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein intend to start this chain of events when they characterized the web of lies surrounding Nixon “Watergate” in 1972? Probably not.
In fact, according to UC Davis History Professor Kathryn Olmsted in a podcast episode of “American Scandal,” the scandal spearheaded the transformation of conspiracy theories, facilitating the support of fictitious explanations in order to make sense of crisis and uncertainty. The catchiness of the suffix allows for ease in both dialogue and shareability online.
So have we lost the plot? Have we normalized the corruption that led to a President’s resignation? Is using trendy lingo making a joke of real and detrimental events or does the use publicize news that more people should be aware of? The answer seems to differ case by case as some involve pedophilia while others involve licking a donut in a corner shop. Either way, the -gate suffix is now a regularity and a slang term for ordinary conversation — the legacy of Watergate will live on in this way, whether we like it or not.