Friday, May 9, 2008

Cellphonegate!

noun: A word used by Qadry Ismail on NFL Live to describe the situation in which photos featuring Matt Leinart and multiple women engaging activities involving boozing and schmoozing with the Cardinals' Quarterback surfaced on the internet.

Forget for a second that this happening is a totally irrelevant story with regards to the Arizona Cardinals, but c'mon. Can't someone--anyone-- come up with a more creative headline for a scandal than a formula that looks like:

A noun that refers to an (non) essential feature of the scandal, + -gate

Spygate was a D- grade name for the Patriots videotaping scandal. Cell phone gate? Cell phone gate? What's next, Finalsgate? Midsummerclassicgate? Applepiegate?

I've got it! The Raiders should poison all the fluids in the Denver Broncos' athletic training center! Then we'll have a really great headline: Watergate!

3 comments:

Robocats said...

This is a problem with the media as a whole too. For instance, I've heard "bittergate" on CNN a few times. If Spygate was a "reach", then bittergate and cellphonegate are the sort of epic reaches that can only be described as "defensive lineman out of Winston-Salem State reaches".

Isn't cellphonegate more fitting for that Joe Horn thing that happened like 5 years ago than an incident that mostly just involved a beerpong, a hot tub, and the clap?

Robocats said...

Raghib was always my favorite Ismail anyway.

GTripp said...

I think I forgot to add the most critical criticism...that those photos of Leinart didn't come from a cell phone at all.

In fact, nothing about the "incident"--if you can even call it that--had anything to do with a cell phone at all.