Just Call Us Blogfinger

During the 2008 presidential campaign and for some time thereafter, Sarah "Buttercup" Palin found herself embroiled in "Troopergate." She was investigated for improperly firing an Alaskan government official after the official refused to fire her former brother-in-law, an Alaskan state trooper. The details of the case don't interest us here. We simply wish to point out that, even without knowing the intricacies of the case under discussion, most readers would know that the subject matter was scandal. Why? Because of the suffix "-gate," of course.

Now, most (if not all) of our reasonably well-educated readership knows from whence this suffix comes. If questioned by a member of the younger generation--or by someone unversed in late 20th-century American history (Sarah Palin, perhaps)--any Sloppist would explain that it plays on the Watergate scandal that scuttled the presidency of Richard Nixon. But if pressed further as to why this scandal was referred to as a "gate" of water, the educated reader would explain that, no, it had nothing to do with water, but, rather that the Watergate Hotel was the site of the scandal's nefarious goings on.

But "gate"--with its connotations of restriction, blockage, hindrance--just sounds so good as a suffix, who can blame political pundits and journalists for adopting and adapting it to subsequent scandals? Iran-Contragate, Whitewatergate, Lewinskygate (and/or Interngate), Travelgate (depressing that so many of these are Clintonian, but what can you do). By the time we get to Troopergate, and whatever the next "gate" will be, we can skip the mental calisthenics to decode the meaning because we've adopted the suffix into our working vocabulary.

Which brings us to another suffix on the edge of acceptance: "finger."

A "finger" denotes a person who attempts to corner the market on a product, probably through underhanded means. As most Sloppists no-doubt know, the etymology comes from the James Bond movie "Goldfinger" (1964), whose eponymous villain, Auric Goldfinger, sought to rob Fort Knox. Yesterday's Times contained an article about cocoa mogul Anthony Ward, who has acquired the nickname "Chocolatefinger" in response to his attempts to corner the market in the world's favorite dessert ingredient.

We know that "finger" has not yet gained universal suffixial currency due to the fact that the Times saw fit to explain the nickname: "The British news media has christened Mr. Ward 'Chocolate Finger,' a nod to the [James] Bond villain Auric Goldfinger." Perhaps this is due to the relative scarcity of moguls with the inclination and resources to try to control a worldwide commodity. We could imagine Rupert "Knuckles" Murdoch being dubbed "Newsfinger"; perhaps Google or Microsoft could come to be known as "Webfinger." Still, we will watch with interest to see if one day "finger" will join "gate" in the gallery of pop-culture affixes.

(Image from imdb.com)