Dick-Gate: Deflated Footballs and Typewriting Monkeys
Political historians never talk about the impressive size of Richard Nixon’s throbbing cock. Had they, and had the discussion started before the June 17, 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Convention, the headlines would have read, “Throbbing Dick’s Scandal” or “Washington’s Most Impressive Member Is in Nixon Pants, Not Congress,” it would not have been call “Dick-Gate”. Instead, averagely-endowed Richard’s Legacy was tainted by a series of poorly-plotted, and easily-exposed instances of illegally monitoring U.S. citizens, including at the Democrats’ 1972 Convention at the Watergate Hotel.
On Monday, January 15, 2015, the media, yes, all of the mediums, erupted in a flurry of speculation and outrage over “Deflate-Gate” — an instance where some footballs maybe had slightly less air than they should have, and that somehow was maybe an advantage, but no one really knows exactly how it could have happened, or why it wasn’t evaluated during the four-hour football game. With so many lives at stake, and the integrity of the purist sport of gentlemen on the line, it was a great matter of serendipity that the game happened to take place at Deflate-Gate Stadium. What’s my point here? Am I rambling? My point is that the suffix “-gate” doesn’t mean anything. The problem at the 1972 Democratic National Convention was not the water, which would then be suffixed by “gate” to create Watergate, the problem was that Slick Rick Nixon was afraid of losing his office to South Dakota Democrat, Senator George McGovern — a white, boring version of Al Gore. If Nixon could have looked ahead to the year 2000, he would have realized that he didn’t need to win the election in order to be president.
Since January 2014, there have no fewer than ten major news stories reported on by the mainstream media using the “-gate” suffix. As of this writing, ABC News, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, some kid on Twitter named KennyRoxx69_420, and Fox News all have front-page stories about Deflate-Gate. The glaringly obvious problem is the lack of creativity put into generating news stories in a world where we have more than a dozen major organizations whose primary objective is to sell ad space and influence political elections — I mean report the news.
The mysterious, underlying problem, we’ll call it the news grundle, is that the journalistic approach taken by our major news outlets has shifted from trying to find the angle that most enlightens and informs the reader, to creating the most homogenous story that completes the already trending hashtag. #Homogate? The lack of creativity, political bias, and financial consideration aren’t new problems with journalism. The illusion of choice — where will we get our information from, who will we get it from, and how will we share it — has created a murky environment in which the type-writing monkey with the quickest trend on Twitter gets to dictate exactly how all of use will see the news — whether it be from a liberal, conservative, independent, or non-traditional outlet. MSNBC and Fox will report the same story, and then at 11pm, Jon Stewart is going to talk about it, and even during his irreverent skewering, he’s going to use the same monkey-generated headline, because his ability to expose the news is only funded by Viacom if he’s still selling ads, or if South Park is still making enough money to subsidize the rest of the shows on Comedy Central.
Are we all fucked? Sure. But when future civilizations read about our mass extinction on microfilm, “Death-Gate,” they won’t see a single word about Richard Nixon’s sizable throbbing cock. #ThankObama
Matt Bullock is one fourth of the hit band Wett Nurse which is currently super popular in Europe. You can follow him on Twitter @matthewtbullock.
The Tusk 
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