Before I start, I want to tell you this. I have watched "Jeopardy!" since the sixties, when it first came on the air and the host was Art Fleming. It was a game show where you actually had to know something, usually something generally considered arcane, or obscure knowledge/facts to win against your opponents, and really, yourself, too. Even as a kid, I was keenly interested in this sort of stuff. Normal learning, beyond the couple of things in school that could actually capture my attention, like spelling and science, bored me to tears, so in spite of the IQ I inherited I only did fair in school after about 3rd grade, but I was pretty darn good at Jeopardy. They don't much teach what I call data obscura in school. They want you to know the big stuff, the broad strokes. Anyway, I grew up and slowly but surely became known to everyone as the trivia queen. Now there are a LOT of things I know nothing about, but there are also many things I know something about. You don't have to be a scholar of anything really to do well on this show, just have a lot of trivial facts stuck in your head; and a reasonable ability to figure probable odds against two other people doesn't hurt. Some days, I do better than the champ of the day, know the final question that no one else gets, and other days, blah, not so good. But that's not what I'm here today about, exactly.
The reason I'm here is Alex Trebek. I have always liked Alex, had a serious crush going for many years over him, in fact, BUT...
Mr. Trebek has always taken it upon himself to not so subtly correct the pronunciation of words by the players, even when the word could go either way. If you didn't say it the way HE did, he would repeat your response and say it the way HE thought it should have been said. A bit snooty, but tolerable. I mean sometimes it CAN go either way, and even if not, if they said it good enough for the judges to accept, WHO made him the grammar police? I can't imagine that they tell him to do this, it's actually sort of rude, isn't it? I will admit freely and without duress that I can be a real word Nazi, especially spelling-wise, can't help it. If I'm not sure what you mean, I will say it back the way I have always heard it to find out, and if I think you NEED to know how to correctly spell something, like on a credit or job application, I WILL point it out to you most times, as a true favor. I am constantly being asked to spell things for people and asked what a word or phrase means, and if I don't know, I'll look it up and get back to you. But we are just talking about being helpful when it counts here, he's become, in his senior years, rather, well, snarky to the contestants. He is now not only correcting EVERY TINY little perceived grammatical error, but he makes fun of syntax, regional pronunciations, the way the contestants wager on Double and Final Jeopardy answers and even when interviewing them, he makes jokes about them, often at their unknowing expense, at least he obviously believes so.
You see him look into the camera and convey an expression that just screams "do you believe this idiot got on my show?" He seems to always ask questions in the interview portion that are pointed at making the most fun of the contestant. Now I don't know if the writers are doing this for the amusement of those watching, or if he takes something that should be straightforward and skews it to make the person look foolish. Either way, this needs to stop. He has stopped being the witty, intelligent host, and has become a really snarky, judgemental, superior acting jerk, and I just hate to see this happening. He makes WAY too many editorial comments during play, ruining the rhythm of the players, and for no better reason than some lame attempts at either some sort of humor or a show of superiority. He is NOT a talk show host, he is a GAME show host. It is not his job to take jabs for the approximate 22 minutes of the show. If he wants to be a snob on the air and act superior to everyone else there, let him get some sort of talk show like William Buckley did, or David Frost, or even Bill O'Reilly (sorry Bill). I don't recall anywhere in the rules of the game where it says that the host will be illuminating while humiliating. He does it pretty much every day now, so check it out if you don't believe me. I think he's having some short-circuiting in his brain or something. He IS the venerable host of the show, not the first, but the longest and best known, like Pat Sajak on Wheel of Fortune...At least Pat just got a bit tipsy way back when and maybe looked a bit foolish himself on occasion, but I don't recall him ever making a contestant look stupid for guessing wrong. He always seems to feel bad for them even if the answer is SO obvious to those of us at home and not trying to think in front of millions of people.
Wake up and smell a bit of humility, Alex. I can't wait to see what you have to say to Watson the computer next week. I hope they taught Watson better manners while they taught it to respond to the game.
Just sayin'
Dragonfly out for now, thanks for coming
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