Читать книгу Anglo-American Cultural Studies - Jody Skinner - Страница 67

Watergate, first of the -gatesIn two words: traumatic, reassuring. The Watergate is an apartment and office building complex in Washington, in which the Democratic Party had its campaign offices in preparation for the 1972 presidential election. A few months prior to NixonNixon, Richard’s landslide win, several men were caught trying to break into the Democratic Party offices. Due to the tenacity of Washington PostWashington Post investigative journalists, Carl BernsteinBernstein, Carl and Bob WoodwardWoodward, slowly but surely it became evident that President Nixon had known about and approved of the attempted cover-up of the Watergate break-in. Almost two years after his reelection, Nixon became the first presidentpresident to resign in order to avoid impeachment and removal from office. The discovery that corruption had extended into the highest levels of powerpower didn’t result in a bloody revolution but in an orderly transfer of power. One of the effects of the Watergate ScandalWatergate Scandal was to make more information available to the public. Americans’ trust in their government was certainly shaken greatly by Watergate, but with the help of a free press and the possibility for political change there wasn’t the revolution that such a scandal could’ve caused. Post Watergate scandals have been marked by the [54]-gate suffix, scandals that range from politically American (Irangate, Monicagate) to politically British (Camillagate) to merely embarrassing: unintentional nudity on televisiontelevision (Nipplegate).