Big or little, significant or silly, real or faux – doesn’t matter. It gets gated.This has been an annoying practice for years. It’s knee-jerk. It’s easy. It’s boring.Worst of all, it suggests a false equivalency.Watergate was serious business. It involved a pernicious and far-reaching abuse of power by the president of the United States and his minions.

Witness recent Apple-related issues, like “antennagate” or “glassgate” to see just how far this has gotten out of hand. Rem Reider is absolutely right. It should stop. But it won’t. Because many journalists are lazy, many of their readers are lazy and now we’re all conditioned to expect “gate” to be attached to every little trivial pissant thing that happens. This has been happening for a long time.