The List of scandals suffixed with gate reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004
(provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

List of scandals suffixed with gate

People like you are child sponsors
Following the U.S. Watergate scandal in the 1970s, in which presidential prerogatives of the Nixon administration collided with the U.S. Constitution in a genuinely important crisis, the suffix -gate has been used to name various other scandals, some of which were distinctly minor affairs, as the following list demonstrates. Its use sometimes indicates that the source of the scandal is an audio tape of a private conversation. Gatemania refers to its overuse.

The cumulative effect of the various "-gates" has been to reduce Watergate in the popular memory to a minor diversion, perhaps not inadvertently.