more on -er

victor steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Nov 27 06:21:04 UTC 2009


To take this in a somewhat different direction (tooting my own horn,
in a way, I suppose), I am wondering if anyone's picked up on the fact
that the conservative blogosphere (and Fox News with it, of course)
has dubbed the East Anglia email swipe as "climategate". What's
interesting about it is that the controversy supposedly attached to
this "-gate" is imagined, but that's not the first time a fictitious
controversy has received a "-gate" suffix.

VS-)

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Leslie Savan <lsavan at verizon.net> wrote:
> In a similar vein, I was tempted to include (but didn't for lack of space)
> the even fainter echo of "the Decider," in the W. sense. It has nothing to
> do with conspiracy theories or, in and of itself, fringe politics. It's
> formulation isn't that of Birther. But, after years of using it
> sarcastically, we may have habitualized ourselves to finding a satisfying
> irony in zapping someone you disagree with with an -er.

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