Porn-gate may trouble trio; screamed the newspaper headline, referring to the viewing of sleaze video on a mobile phone in Karnataka Legislative Assembly. The clandestine act was busted by a camera person from the press gallery. When a snooper snooped on snoopers, one got the credit and the others were discredited. I was saddened, not for the trio but for the gate. A gate was always associated with positive reference from my childhood. My first acquaintance with a gate perhaps was infantile, when I was made to depend on Cow & Gate milk powder – the UK brand supplied by importers in India. I can still remember the unforgettable tin with a crown, a cow and a wicket gate, which was an indispensable assortment in the kitchen cupboard until the ’60s. My nostalgic association with a gate was always delectable and nourishing, because of the cookies stored in Cow & Gate tins, until Richard Nixon changed it for worse, with a ‘wicked gate’.
By his scandalous intrusion into Watergate, he had opened the floodgates of nasty etymology, suffixing scandals with a gate. My positive reference to Gates and Windows also becomes immeasurable. All that was positive with a gate, whether it was Cow & Gate or India Gate was closed forever. A gate suffixed with cow, reminds me now of Bihar and fodder scam. The gate, instead of guarding the property from intrusion, started losing its property, acquiring scandalous meaning. I wonder why it has not acquired a new name as Nixonism in line with Spoonerism; perhaps the future historians will name him as Nixon the Gate. Not all scandals are associated with a gate. To be associated with a gate, a scandal has to satisfy certain criteria. The scandal has to have primarily moral impropriety with or without financial ramification, to enter the gate. In politics it is always associated with a select tribe of politicians who do not adhere to the Eleventh Commandment ‘Thou shall not be caught’ or Eleven A ‘Though shall not be caught on camera’. In other fields it should be obvious, with inescapable gates to qualify for ‘gatification’. My quick search in cyber space led to several scandals suffixed with gate. The ‘gatification’ of scandals has become geo-specific, so much so one could find Memogate (US) and Memogate (Pakistan). As I was skimming through the scandalgates, I felt some could be renamed. There was a scandal involving the exposure of physically strategic and statistically vital attributes of Janet Jackson; the name of which appeared crass. It could be renamed as Mammogate, to render it more meaningful and scientific.
There are too many widely recognised ‘scandal gates’, which have been classified in different categories as, arts and entertainment, journalism and academics, politics, sports, technology, etc. One can find maximum number of gate crashing entries in politics alone which outnumber all the other entries put together. Perhaps politicians have a pronounced scandal appetite like the entrepreneurs who have risk appetite. Scandal is the occupational hazard of politics; occupation for politicians and hazard for the electorate.