And on a lighter note: Close the -gate!
A little pet peeve: Can we quit using the suffix -gate to refer to every little political spat we have? Rathergate, now Easongate… It used to be clever, now it’s cliché.
Yes, Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin and the entire cast of Little Green Footballs: I’m talking to you.
Of course, now I can hear all the keyboards a’clickin’ telling me that “Eason-gate” isn’t just a little political spat. It’s a big deal! The chief news executive at CNN slandered our entire military by claiming we deliberately targeted journalists during combat in Iraq!
Long term, is that important? Are the slanderous words of one newsman going to be more than just an obscure footnote in the history books? I don’t think so. Like virtually every other political scandal, I predict that this one will be fought over for a couple of months and forgotten.
I mean, it says a lot about CNN, but nothing we didn’t already know.
See, this is why I could never be a politician. I couldn’t fight the day to day battles over Eason Jordan and Social Security and all that. I’d get sick of it. I like big-picture politics and debates over policy, but not the down-in-the-mud fighting, saying the same things again, and again, and again, and again….
Anyway.
Even if “Eason-gate” were to become a big historical deal, leading to, say, the collapse of the big cable news networks, don’t you think we could come up with a better moniker? Our children will be very disappointed in us when they find out that we weren’t original enough to come up with a good name.
How about… The Davos Scandal, after the city in which he made the remarks. Dull, boring, but informative and unique. After all, what else happens in Davos?
Or the “Eason Jordan Slanders Our Military” scandal?
Our just the Jordan scandal?
OK, I’m not feeling creative. That’s probably because I’m up late typing instead of sleeping. But… uh… don’t use -gate. Any more. It should be Banished from the Queen’s English.