OT Contributor Podcast: Heard Tell w/Guest Burt Likko Discussing Jeopardy!

Ordinary Times Editor-in-Chief Emeritus Burt Likko joins Andrew Donaldson on the latest Heard Tell podcast to discuss the travails of Jeopardy! and ponder the future of a cultural icon.

Jeopardy! And What Is Actually Not So Important? By Burt Likko

Well, I’m here to tell you that it really doesn’t matter, at least not to me. All three of the leading contenders have good things going for them as possible hosts and thus as possible pop culture icons, and it’s just fine with me that the producers are taking their time picking that person.

What’s important is that utterly wrongheaded opinions like the one held by my good friend Andrew Donaldson’s do not take sway:

Just cancel Jeopardy. Seriously, just let it go.

— Andrew Donaldson (@four4thefire) August 24, 2021

I consider Andrew one of my top-tier internet friends and I dearly look forward to meeting him in person one day. But on this point, he is exactly and completely wrong. Jeopardy! is an enduring part of our culture enjoyed by a broad category of people, people of all ages, from every conceivable demographic group, and educational background. Its appeal is universal. You can watch it come on TV and enjoy it. You can play along with it in a bar and make friends with total strangers with it.

The breadth of things you need to know to have a fighting chance on Jeopardy! is staggering. Yes, you need “a head for trivia.” What does that mean? To be good at trivia requires that you have an interest in a broad spectrum of subjects, from history and geography to sports and entertainment to science and technology to mathematics and wordplay. You need to be a polymath, and probably have to get some of that information in your head autodidactically. Not coincidentally, I learned words like “polymath” and “autodidact” watching Jeopardy! and you can too. Jeopardy! encourages people to learn about these things.

If you pay attention watching Jeopardy!, you almost can’t help but learn some stuff.

True, some folks throw up their hands and say things like “Well, I’m just no good at math, but that guy sure is!” All by itself, that’s a good thing. The smart person is the admired person. Having knowledge is a good thing.

Jeopardy! And What Are Things That Are Different Are Not The Same by Andrew Donaldson

When my eminent friend and Ordinary Times legend Burt Likko took exception to my tweet and wrote his thoughts on Jeopardy! this paragraph was relatable to me:

The difficulty and seeming obscurity of the questions became a part of pop culture as well. It became a mark of prestige to be the person in a family or a group of friends who could get Jeopardy! questions right when playing along at home. Quietly, half an hour daily on most weekdays, from 1984 to his death in 2020, Alex Trebek and Jeopardy! helped make being smart cool, to make trivia quizzes a national craze, and most of all to celebrate knowing things.

Hand up. That was me. I wanted to know things. Growing up pre-to-early internet knowing things meant talking to adults, raiding my father’s books, and trying to out-Jeopardy! the ridiculously good at it June Foster Gower and other members of my family.

So, why did I tweet it was time to shut down the institution, especially knowing no such thing was going to happen?

Because, and admittedly selfishly, it isn’t Jeopardy! as we have — or at least my age group has only — known it anymore, nor never will be again.

Oh, it’s really, really close. Maybe, 80-85% of what it was. More than enough to be better than most other things, and certainly good enough to continue on for a time being.

But not the same.

Folks like Burt rightly point out that Twitter is not real life. That the ratings for the guests hosts during the yearlong replacement sweepstakes were good. That the guest hosts by and large did well. That interest in that search has kept the show at the fore of the culture dialogue. But Twitter is real, and it is both the headwaters and sloosh boxes of our media. We cannot return to unknown unknowns after knowing things. I cannot unknow how social media documented the way Ken Jennings conducts himself when not smiling to camera either during his 75-win run, various guest appearances, or his own audition for the role of Trebek replacement. I cannot unknow my lingering questions as to why Jeopardy! didn’t have more of a problem with that behavior, until the Mike Richards debacle made it suspicious that the latter, having his own similar issues with not respecting folks, wasn’t about to reel in the former. That might not be fair, but there it is, honest as I can tell you. In the latest media kerfuffle that prompted my tweet, the other announced host of Jeopardy!, Mayim Bialik, was dealing with her own social media past and statements being combed through for questionable content.

To be fair, in the current environment, I’m sure whoever Jeopardy! puts up now will get the wrong deeds carwash treatment. To Burt and probably the majority of Jeopardy fans, it doesn’t matter who the host is. Burt eloquently writes in detail why it doesn’t matter, that the whole of the show is much greater than the part of the host. That this unique universal space of great knowledge being shared by whosoever will tune in is a virtuous thing worth preserving.

In principle I agree. I want it to be true in practice as well. But I can’t. It isn’t.

So, what say you?