"Gate Suffic Being Overused" Claims Political Commentator

The "-gate" suffix, used to denote a scandal and derived from the Watergate crisis of the Nixon presidency, is being overused in political commentary according to Brent Richards.

"It used to be a good way to quickly create a key reference-word for emerging and sprawling politcal events; it then became a comical way to over-exagerate the importance of poltician's mistakes; however now, the term is so overused as to have more or less no meaning" stated the ex-government advisor yesterday. "By becoming a cliche, the term has lost any meaning it perhaps used to have and each extra usage just drags us further into a semantic bog".

A number of other journalists and commentators have picked up on this issue since, which it has been agreed is a serious concern. Those indentifed of being embroiled in the scandal - which has now become known as Gategate - were seeking damage limitation yesterday evening.