This is Jeopardy - Failures of the Superchampions, Part 2

 

Author’s Note: This was originally meant to be a two-part article but because the stories involved are more complicated then can be summed up in a single article, I’ve decided to write three separate articles, possibly a fourth, in the lead-up to the Tournament of Champions. Many of the names in this article will be familiar to recent fans of Jeopardy as the majority of them have appeared in the Jeopardy Invitational Tournament this past March or I have advocated for their inclusion in future tournaments in my previous articles on Jeopardy. I will do my best not to regurgitate past articles whenever possible.

 

I was eagerly anticipating the 2013-2014 season of Jeopardy well before it began. By that point I had been watching the show long enough to know that they had a history of doing Tournament on significant anniversaries of the show’s run and since the 30^th season was coming I expected the same.

I was proven correct as early in October the Battle of the Decades was announced and the show began preparing for what was the best postseason tournament in its history to that point. What I had no idea of knowing – what no Jeopardy fan could have known – was that before the first round of that Tournament started, the show was going to witness the arrival of the kind of champion the show hadn’t seen in nearly a decade.

On January 28, 2014 Arthur Chu then a compliance analyst from Ohio, made his first appearance on Jeopardy. He won $37,200 in his first game and when the week ended he’d won $102,800 in four games.

He then had to wait three weeks for his next appearance as the first round of the Battle of The Decades took place, followed immediately afterwards by the 2014 College Championship. (This was won by Terry O’Shea, who we’ll actually be talking about later in this same article.

When regular season play returned on February 24, he promptly won five consecutive games, all but the last runaway victories and on the eighth game he won $58,200. After win number nine he had to then wait another week to defend his title as the 1990s round of the Battle of The Decades was taking place. He then promptly won two more runaway games. Finally on March 12^th his remarkable run came to an end after eleven wins and $297, 200 in earnings.

I’m honestly more impressed Arthur did as well as he did with so many layoffs between his appearances then his actual record which is remarkable in itself. At the end of his run he was now in third place all time in both games won and money won in a Jeopardy players original appearance. His approach to the game was clearly modeled after Roger Craig as Alex pointed out talking to Roger during his appearance during the Battle of the Decades. He went to the bottom of the board, sought out the Daily Double and bet big on them. It had worked for him with the same level of success as it had for Roger and for longer.

It had been almost nine years since any player had won this many games on Jeopardy. It would be less than six weeks before someone arrived who won that many games – and then some.

Julia Collins didn’t seem like a great Jeopardy player when she won her first game on April 21^st, barely inching out a victory over two game winner Frederique Delapree. By the end of the week she was still there having won over $100,000. She was also there at the end of the following week with 10 wins and $220,610.

Then like Arthur her run was interrupted by the Battle of the Decades, in this case for the final two weeks of the tournament. She was back on May 19^th – and picked up right where she left off. Slowly and methodically she kept winning games and money. At the end of that week she had fifteen wins and over $300,000. On May 29 she had nineteen wins, tying David Madden’s second place mark. The next day she outpaced him. Her luck only held one more day as she was unseated by Brian Loughnane after 20 wins and $428,100.

This was not only one of the greatest performances in Jeopardy history but the best for a female contestant by a long shot: the previous record in games won by a female contestant had been set the previous season when Stephanie Jass won seven games. Julia was a more traditional type of Jeopardy player than Arthur, starting at the top of categories and waiting until they were done before moving on to the next one. She didn’t seek Daily Doubles out and she was far more conservative in her wagers than Arthur had been. She was methodical in her skill, rarely winning enormous sums of money in her wins the way later super-champions did. No one, certainly not me, could deny her dominance or effectiveness.

Around this time – as much in regard to the Battle of the Decades as the arrival of Arthur and Julia –  the idea of trying to figure out who the greatest players in Jeopardy history was starting to take root in my mind. Writing about it in some fashion hadn’t occurred to me but I was starting to take it more seriously then the casual Jeopardy viewer or even the long time fan. In a sense the Battle of The Decades was solidifying the idea because by the end of it Alex himself had referred to the three finalists – Brad Rutter, Ken Jennings and Roger Craig – as perhaps the three most significant players in Jeopardy history. Roger had the one-day record, Ken had won the most games and Brad, by virtue of his wins in the Million Dollars Masters and the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, had won the most money. When the finals were over and Brad had emerged victorious – again – Brad, Ken and Roger were ranked first, second and third in all-time money won. By finishing third in the Tournament Roger had earned $50,000 which put his total winnings to that point at $530,200.

So around the time of the next Tournament of Champions the following November I knew that it was significant in a way that past ones hadn’t been. If either Arthur or Julia won the grand prize of $250,000, they would vault ahead of Roger and become the third highest money winner in Jeopardy history. That being said I was also in a position that no fan of Jeopardy had ever been into that point: there were two champions who’d won more than ten games in this tournament and I’m not sure anybody could honestly have told you at the time which one had a better chance of winning the grand prize.

Like everyone else I assumed that one would end up winning the Tournament. However I didn’t believe for a moment that it would be easy for either to get to the finals if for no other reason that even without the two of these super-champions the 2014 TOC roster was incredibly, almost ridiculously strong.

For one thing, there was only one player in the entire roster who had won fewer than five games. (I’ll exclude the College Champions and the winner of the Teachers Tournament in this list.) Three players had won six games: Andrew Moore, Sandie Baker and Jared Hall. And in what may have been the biggest sign of how changes were coming, there were also two eight game winners: Drew Horwood, who won $138,100 in March of 2013 and Ben Ingram, who’d won $176,534 in July of that year. In almost every previous Tournament of 2007 to 2013 they would have been the leaders in games won. In the 2014 TOC, they were tied for third place.

In his first appearance Arthur started slowly against Andrew Moore and Rani Pfeiffer. But in Double Jeopardy Arthur resumed his natural dominance and by the end of Double Jeopardy had $21,000 amassed a runaway victory. He made it look easy.

“20-time Jeopardy champion” (that was how Julia introduced herself in the Tournament of Champions actually started out stronger and led practically from beginning to end against Joshua Brakhage and Jim Coury, the winner of the 2013 College Champions participating that year. Going into Final Jeopardy she had $16,200 to Joshua’s $11,800.

And then in Final Jeopardy it went wrong. The category was THE US CONSTITUTION: “The three Latin phrases found in the Constitution are ‘pro tempore’, ‘ex post facto’ & this legal 2-word phrase.” Jim and Joshua both knew the correct response: “What is habeus corpus?” Julia wrote down: “What is magna gloria?” That cost her $7100 and dropped to her to second place with $9100. Her only hope was for a wild card spot.

She got in – by the skin of her teeth. The four high scores for non-winners made it in and she had the fourth highest score.

Redemption came for Julia in her semi-final match which was played against Terry O’Shea, the winner of the 2014 College Championship and Jared Hall who’d won six games and an impressive $181,001 in the course of them. Both Terry and Jared had won their quarterfinal matches so Julia was, at least theoretically, the odd one out.

Again Julia took an early lead and managed to hold it throughout the game, helped by a mistake by Jared on a Daily Double early in Double Jeopardy that he never came back from. She had $12,000 at the end of Double Jeopardy to Terry’s $8200 and Jared’s $7600.

It came down to Final Jeopardy and the category THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GLOBE: “This capital city, which at 12,330 miles is farthest from Madrid, is named for a soldier who spent time in Madrid.” Julia was the only player who knew the correct response: “What is Wellington?” (the capital of New Zealand named for the Duke of Wellington.)

Arthur won his semi-final game somewhat more convincingly though it wasn’t as easy as Julia’s victory. The third semi-finalist would turnout to be Ben, who ran away with his semi-final match. All three players managed to be the only player to get Final Jeopardy correctly though in Ben’s case, he was the only one who took it seriously.

As Alex himself remarked in the introductions to the first game of the finals Ben, Julia and Arthur were already an impressive field: combined they had already won 39 games and just over $900,000. The first game of the finals was one of the greatest games I’ve seen played in a Tournament of Champions in over thirty years of watching the show.

In the Jeopardy round of Game 1 Ben and Arthur spent much of the match battling for supremacy and it wasn’t until the end of the round that Arthur pulled ahead with $8400 to Ben’s $6400. Julia struggled throughout the round and finished in a distant third with $2400.

Julia managed to change her fortune early in Double Jeopardy with a category that the show rarely goes back to: “INITIALS TO ROMAN NUMERALS TO NUMBERS.” Alex explained: “I’ll give you an example. If we said, ‘French bag maker,” that would be Louis Vuitton. We take the letters LV, and that translates to what number? 55.”

Julia went right for it and found the Daily Double in it. She bet the $4400 she had:

“For the judge best known for the 1994 O.J. Simpson Case.” She responded: “What is 51?” (LI, Lance Ito.) She was right back in it.

The round was fundamentally dominated by Julia and Arthur with Ben only able to ring in four times the entire round. He made them count and got $6400 out of them.

By the end of the round Arthur had been superb with 29 correct responses and just one mistake the entire game. He’d accumulated $25,600. But Julia and Ben were anything but quiet: Julia finished the round with $18,200 and Ben with $12,800.

Now I should mention that while I’ve had a lot of luck with Final Jeopardy throughout the Tournament of Champions over the last decade, I have always found their Final Jeopardys in the two-game finals ludicrously difficult. So, it’s worth noting, did the three contestants during that period. Such was the case here.

The category for Game 1 was 20^th CENTURY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS: “In this year, there were no presidents or vice presidents running but three of the 4 men on the 2 major party ballots would later become President.”

After the music ended and the lights went up, Alex acknowledged: “This was a tough one.” Ben’s response was revealed first: “What is 1920?” He was correct. Harding won the President; Coolidge would ascend to the White House after Harding’s death and the Democratic Vice President that year was FDR. Ben gambled and bet everything to double his score. Julia had guessed 1952. And it cost her $11,800. Arthur thought it was 1932 and he lost $10,000. In the blink of an eye the tables were turned: Ben was in the lead with $25,600, Arthur was in second with $15,600 and Julia trailed with $6400.

In Game 2 Ben got off to a fast start in the Jeopardy round but Arthur managed to catch and pass him on his last correct response. At the end of it Arthur had a narrow lead with $4200 to Ben’s $3800 and Julia, who struggled throughout, had $1200.

Arthur got off to a fast start in Double Jeopardy and had a chance to pick up a lot of lost ground when he found the first Daily Double in McWRITERS. He bet the $7000 he had: “In 1962 ‘Marshall McLuhan wrote ‘Electronic Independence recreates the world in the image of a global’. Arthur guessed: “What is ‘web” when it was village. (No one I should mention got a single clue correct in this category including yon scribe at home.) Arthur recovered by finding the other Daily Double and by the end of the round he had moved back into the lead with $10,400 to Julia’s $7600 and Ben’s $6600. Julia’s low score meant she wouldn’t be contended for anything other than second place and that it was between Arthur and Ben for the grand prize.

The deciding Final Jeopardy dealt with SHAKESPEAREAN GEOGRAPHY. It too was a mother: “Of the 5 cities mentioned in Shakespeare play titles, it’s the only one not found in Europe.” Alex acknowledged it was a tough one.

Ben wrote down: “What is Cairo?” As Alex pointed out Cairo didn’t appear in a Shakespeare title. Ben lost $4201, bringing him down to $2399. His two-day total was now $27,999. Julia couldn’t come up with anything. She lost $2000 and guaranteed herself a third place position.

It was all on Arthur. His response was: “What is Thebes?” As Alex explained afterwards the play was Pericles, Prince of Tyre. (That city is located in what is now Lebanon.) That Arthur had bet everything was irrelevant; Ben was already ahead of him and it was Ben who became the winner of the 2014 Tournament of Champions.

It’s hard to consider Ben’s performance an upset, considering that he’d played by far the best of all three finalists. He won both his quarterfinal match and semi-final in fairly convincing fashion and was the only contestant to give a correct response in Final Jeopardy in either Final. Arthur played exceptionally throughout the entire Tournament, no question, but Ben was clearly as good as him at least in the Jeopardy rounds.

At the time I was by far the most stunned by how disappointing Julia’s performance overall had been: she only got one Final Jeopardy correct in all four games she played, backed into the semi-finals and with the sole exception of her quarterfinal, she didn’t play particularly well. Though I didn’t know it until a few years later Julia’s performance was a harbinger of how super-champions have generally performed once they reach the Tournament of Champions. It always seemed to be a slog for them to get past the quarterfinals and luck was often far more important than skills.

It must also be said that along with being a short series this is a lineup of the best of the best and none of the players were undeserving of being there. Once you get to the TOC, it doesn’t matter if you’ve won five games or twenty, you’re all starting out at the same place. I’d learned that with David Madden; I’d clearly forgotten it when it came to Julia – and like all Jeopardy fans, I’d have to keep learning this lesson.

In the next article in this series I will deal with the incomparable Matt Jackson who seemed like an unstoppable force in his original run – only to come face to face in the 2015 Tournament of Champions with an immovable object.

Lefitsts Have Their Own Genre of Apocalypse Fiction - And It's Almost As Bad As The Apocalypse

 

 

There have been many, many subcategories of how writers have dealt with the end of the world over the years but I’m beginning to believe that the vast majority of them fall into one of two major groups.

The first is crisis fiction. In this version of fiction the world as we know it comes to an end because of an outside factor. Usually, if not always, that factor is supernatural – zombies, alien invaders, vampires – and in some cases it’s medical – usually a virus of some kind. (There can be an overlap of the two categories as we’ve seen in films like I Am Legend and World War Z.) In this kind of fiction, the remainder of society finds a way to band together to fight the common enemy or, just as often, each other along with that threat. (The Walking Dead is the most famous of that brand.)

The second is dystopian fiction. This brand of fiction takes place decades, if not centuries after society collapses on Earth and we see a new group of people, usually young, trying to rebuild society, almost always by rebelling against the old order. From this trope we have gotten such series as The Hunger Games and Divergent as well as more adult fiction that often can be satirical. Canticle for Leibowitz comes to mind and if it handed been cancelled Joss Whedon’s Firefly very likely would have taken the same version of events.

The latter version is far more often political in nature than the former. It has been, obviously, since the work of George Orwell and as we’ve seen over the years many writers have attempted similar versions from Margaret Atwood and Emily St. John. Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone was the first major work of art to try and deal with it in anthology form and there have been several series in the 21^st century that have also tried to deal with – and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future. These works of fictions are generally darker than the crisis type of fiction because the problem has been going on for generations and seems impossible to solve. I suspect that’s why when The Handmaid’s Tale was adapted for television the writers chose to argue for a force of rebellion rather than Atwood’s dark vision.

But browsing through Barnes & Noble earlier today, in the midst of Christmas shopping, I was reminded of another, smaller subgenre of end of the world fiction. This is the kind of writing that while it has a clear niche for a long time and always will, it almost never becomes a film or television series. I’m aware of just one filmed version of one such story and I’ll discuss it later in this article. I’m not talking of the kinds of horror novels that tell these stories; though as I’ve made clear in an earlier article I loathe them just as much.

I suspect that these novels’ audience is almost certainly made up those who think publications like The Nation are too mainstream, avidly read the work of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky for fun and may very well do a lot of posting on sites like this. These are the people who believe that the apocalypse has already come, that there’s nothing to do the stop it, and actually seem to be waiting for the world to end to say: “I told you so.” These novels have those same kind of confirmation bias of the world as they suspect it is and because they are close enough to reality but ostensibly fiction they know doubt sell exclusively with these kinds of audiences.  In some cases the writing is superior to the kind of prose I see in this columns, but the sense of inevitable despair is just as obvious about our society and when the protagonist meets their doom, I suspect the readers at home lie back in their beds and light up.

I do my level best to avoid these novels like the plague (and to be clear, I’m not fond of those kinds of books either) but today I was doing Christmas shopping and I had the misfortune to encounter not one, but two such books. In fairness the second one I read at least tries to suggest an alternative with its end that isn’t pure despair but at the end of day their utter contempt for humanity as a whole more than shines through so it doesn’t make much of a difference. In short, both books will probably sell very well. That both books are written by authors that have done far better material in my opinion leads to be despair.

The one that’s the ostensible comedy is Adam Mansbach’s The Golem of Brooklyn. Mansbach is best known for writing the children book parodies “Go The F--- To Sleep” as well as some adult novels. The novel tells the story of Len Bronstein, a Brooklyn art teacher who steals an immense quantity of clay from his school, gets stoned, and despite knowing little about Judaism somehow manages to bring the Golem to the life. He’s unable to communicate with this mystic creature so he recruits a bodega clerk and ex-Hasid named Miri Applebaum.

The Golem learns English eventually by ingesting LSD and binge watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. This is funny. Not so funny: the Golem then reveals every previous iteration of himself and makes it very clear he comes out in every kind of possible trauma the Jewish people have undergone. He demands to know why he has been recreated and whom he must destroy. Miri shows him a vision of white nationalists at Charlottesville.

The Golem then goes on a rampage through a right wing rally and kills dozens of people while Miri films it for the world to see. To Miri the Golem is here for one purpose: to become the enforcer and invoke the horrific vengeance on every anti-Semite in the world. Len is horrified by the carnage before him and as they escape tries desperately to explain to Miri that the Golem has done will backfire and at the end of the day, things will only get worse for the Jews. I won’t reveal the ending of the novel (not because of a spoiler warning but because it’s basically the same ending many of these books have) but Mansbach makes it very clear that there are two extremes of the world and that the far-left version can be just as contemptible as the far right.

In a sense this novel at the very least argues there are two sides to every story but it’s just as despairing as all the other kind of leftist fiction because it makes it very clear that this solution is the one that many in this group really think is the only resolution. I’ll admit there’s an ambiguity to the ending which makes it an improvement over most of this fiction but Mansbach has a different kind of despair that is basically the same variation: for certain minorities groups, there is never going to be end to hatred or discrimination, only endless suffering.

I encountered more or less the exact same version of this in Nicola Yoon’s One of Our Kind. Yoon is a very successful children’s author, publisher of such books as Everything, Everything and The Sun is Also a Star. The latter book was made into a movie. I really don’t think her first adult novel – helpfully described in the blurbs as Get Out meets Stepford Wives – is likely too.

In this novel Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned black utopia of Liberty, California hoping to find a community of like-minded people. Jasmyn came hoping to find liberals and social justice activists striving for racial equality but the residents seem more focused on spa treatments and ignoring the worlds trouble. Jasmyn’s friends in the community are equally perplexed and frustrated by the outlook of most residents. However as you’d expect they come to change slowly but surely. Then she learns that nobody seems to leave Liberty except for one couple and when she tracks them down…

…well, the solution is horrific and perhaps inevitable. The novel, I should add, is punctuated by clippings of what have sadly become everyday horrors in the lives of African-Americans and that every member of the community is suffering from including Kingston. The members of this community have also faced this world and see nothing but an endless cycle of despair and death and they truly think that fighting and resistance is pointless. I won’t dare reveal the climax (though if you know the plots of both films in the blurb I mentioned you might be able to figure it out by yourself) except that, in my opinion, it is even bleaker than Mansbach’s ending.

Both Mansbach and Yoon are looking at bigotry and the centuries of prejudice their respective minorities have suffered; for Mansbach, it’s Judaism, for Yoon it’s African-American. Mansbach’s characters are working class; Yoon’s are wealthy. And yet both of them independent reach the same conclusion: that in America there is no real place for them in the world as it exists. Mansbach’s character resort to violence; Yoon’s essentially surrender. And while both books are, at least in theory comedies, all they really are is part of the fictional version of what people on this sight call doomporn.

And this is why the leftist version of the end of the world rarely makes it to the big or small screen. There is only one exception that I am aware of to date and that’s Dave Eggers The Circle. The novel deals with an intern who joins The Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company an organization that links users personal emails, social media, banking and purchase into a single online agency. As you’d expect it becomes very clear that this agency has sinister intentions that are built on complete world domination that will make everybody electronic slaves. Mae is forced to make a decision to either stop the Circle from essentially destroying the world or to stop it. I think you know what she does.

It's not what you think because Eggers wrote a sequel to this novel called The Every. This site is the world’s large ecommerce site and it merges with The Circle to create the richest and most dangerous monopoly ever know – which is most beloved. In it Delaney Wells an unwavering tech skeptic gets hired with one mission in mind: to bring down the company from within. She works with a colleague to find a weakness to free humanity from all-encompassing surveillance and the emoji-driven infantilization of the species.

Both of these books tell Eggers version of humanity which is part and parcel of the leftist version: in over a thousand pages combined he basically tells the kind of story all leftists have telling in tweets about humanity: they are sheep, who don’t want to be free and like the slavery there in. I don’t know whether Eggers truly believes this kind of thing or if it’s the kind of ego drive exercise won by a Pulitzer-Prize winner. But either way it fits dead to right the version of what so many leftists in this world think: people are infantilized idiots who don’t know what’s best for them and don’t want to really engage with the world around them as long as their needs are satisfied. That I’m reading a summary of Eggers work on Amazon would seem to be a hypocrisy to large for him but its in keeping with this kind of writing from the left’s general political methodology of living in its own bubble, seeing the sins of the world and not seeing those same sins in their own.

I should mention this book was adapted into a film starring Tom Hanks, Emma Watson and John Boyega. It was extremely poorly received by critics and even on a budget of 18 million dollars barely made it’s money back, the rare box office failure for Hanks. I blame neither the critics nor the audience but rather the creator who thought this was a commercial project. It’s not.

All of these works are masters of subtlety to Andrew Yang (yes that one) and Stephen Marche’s The Last Election. This not even thinly veiled work of progressive dogma disguised (not well) as fiction tells with not even veiled anticipation the end of America as we know it. This isn’t a book so much as Yang writing fanfiction for his own political career arguing that America really wants the leftist vision he sets out for but because of our broken electoral system, democracy as we know it collapses. The book follows the story of the campaign manager of a third party system who is a popular centrist and frank and honest in contrast with a New York Times reporter who stumbles on a plot by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to seize power in the anticipated chaos of the next election. The incumbent president is an out of touch Democrat, the Republican candidate a near fascist. Commentary from the talking heads of MSNBC and Fox News are recording saying for all intents and purposes nothing they haven’t said before.

The book essentially has almost every single talking point the left uses about the electoral college and the Constitution for the last twenty years. (I’m honestly shocked Daily Kos didn’t endorse it.) The fact that America is essentially tearing itself apart while this is going on – bombings, assassination attempts and murders are taking place throughout the book – are fundamentally irrelevant to Yang’s polemic which is to argue that America was a failed state long before this last election because it never fully embraced the leftist version of America, particularly in regard to our institutions such as politics and journalism. There are no working-class or average Americans seen in Yang’s book, of course; this book isn’t for them. He ends the book before the coup and fascist state that he’s been working for unfold, no doubt because he has no idea what it really would like or just as likely he assumes we’re already in and always have been. There’s a possibility that Yang will self-fund this film, even if nobody goes to it: that’s how much of a vanity project it is.

The reason none of these books will ever be turned into the kind of TV shows such as Station Eleven or The Last of Us and why The Circle bombed is simple: like almost all of the left’s political writing, they are pedantic drags that are as not about entertaining its audience as its lecturing them. I don’t know for sure but I suspect many of the people who ended up reading The Circle never came back to it the same way they would books like The Stand or The Hunger Games and I don’t see much of a value in rereading any of the other books I’ve mentioned in this article. It’s not just that they’re one-trick ponies; it’s that the trick isn’t particularly good and its not particularly fun. There’s value in re-watching Get Out or The Stepford Wives because you can pick up[ on things you missed. When you reach the end of One of Our Kind, there’s no reason to read it again. People read fiction for the purpose of being fun and entertained as well as educated. We want our messages in our novels to be subtle and nuanced and only think about them later on.

None of the books I’ve listed have any of those gifts for prose. Like almost everything leftists write in non-fiction, it’s heavy handed and doesn’t trust the reader to get the point unless its spelled out in letters so big you could read from space. It’s disappointed particularly in the case of Eggers and Yoon who in other books have the ability to keep whatever messages they want to tell their readers with delicacy and gentleness. In One of Our Kind and The Circle at a certain point both writers abandon nuance and decide to make their view of the world abundantly clear. Both claim their books are satirical, but whatever laughs they have are mean and from the perspective of looking at the world with almost visceral contempt. I don’t mind that they end unhappily; I mind that are just a slog getting there and give you nothing in return for it.

I should mention by the way that I browsed all of these books when I was either in libraries and bookstores and made a point going forward that I would not only never buy these books but that these authors were on my shit-list from this point forward. (I put an asterisk on Yoon because this is for adults; her YA books are still in my good graces.) This is a big deal for me because I am willing to read just about anything and find a certain amount of value in it even after I’m finished. A book has to be truly horrible in a certain way for be to never want to read any of the author’s work ever again and there are few authors on that list even now.

So to sum up, if you ever find yourself in an apocalypse scenario and you need to build a bunker do not under any circumstances bring these books with you. Consider using them for sustenance first. Reading them makes dying by zombie bite or mysterious contagion seem almost desirable by comparison.

Better Late Than Never: Nobody Wants This

 

 

Ever since she managed to completely fool W. Earl Brown and Kim Dickens in an all too brief stint on Deadwood there has been no actress who has had the power to be so good and being bad as Kristen Bell. It astonishes me that nearly a full sixteen years after Veronica Mars was first cancelled she spent the better part of the 2010s in what were longer runs playing somewhat more corrupt bad girls in comedies. She was the only good thing about the overblown Showtime series House of Lies and her character was able to change the afterlife with the force of her personality on the masterpiece The Good Place. Few actresses have been better during the era of Peak TV then Bell  and with the exception of contemporaries such as Gina Rodriguez or Keri Russell, fewer have gotten less recognition from awards shows such as the Emmys. (The Emmys have a chance to make it up to Russell with The Diplomat.)

One of the better jokes about Nobody Wants This the Netflix romantic comedy that has commanded both audiences and awards shows the last few weeks is that all of the people capable of disliking Bell are all apparently in this series. Bell plays Joanne, the late-thirtyish Angeleno who has a podcast with her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) called Nobody Wants This. The podcast mostly deals with Joanne and Morgan’s daily life and quite a bit of their sexual behavior, with Joanne’s dating history being a prominent topic for the show. Joanne is the kind of person charitably known as messy and she is very proudly an agnostic. When the possibility for her podcast leads to syndication she ends up at a dinner with her producer showing up in a very bold fur coat where she meets Noah (Adam Brody.)

We actually meet Noah before this and we know that he’s just gotten out of a relationship with the definition of a very needy girlfriend who has decided they are going to get married and have kids before he did. He very gently breaks up with her, something that his family and notably her family refuse to accept. At the dinner they have a conversation – and its there that Joanne learns Noah’s a rabbi.

I suspect the immediate parallels went to the second season of Fleabag and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s relationship with Andrew Scott’s Hot Priest. It’s not quite as taboo for priests to have relationship as it is rabbis but there is a bigger obstacle: the woman must be Jewish which Joanne is not. The attraction between the two is very clear as is the fact that Noah really is looking for a loophole (“is there a possibility there’s some Judaism in your background?” he keeps asking on their first meeting.) But both of them try to find a way to forget each other. Of course because this is a romantic comedy, Joanne ends up Noah’s doorstep; because this is a Netflix comedy, it’s at a temple where he’s just finish presiding over Sabbath services.

I suspect that there has been a lot of discussion whether so much of the Roklovs attitude upon seeing Joanne is over the top (when his mother sees him she says “A shiksa!” with all the force of Eleanor saying “What the fork?”) but as someone who has more than his share of deeply religious friends, I can tell there isn’t much of an exaggeration, particularly with everybody bringing their daughters to meet the eligible Jewish bachelor and the parents behaving exactly like the fact that Noah ended his relationship with Rebecca is just a phase. If anything those of you were fond of the Weissman family during the extraordinary Marvelous Mrs. Maisel will know that very little about Jewish families has changed in seventy years: there’s very little difference between Tovah Feldshuh’s meddling mother and Marin Hinkle’s extraordinary work on Maisel when it comes to the despairing and hand-wringing attitude. The only real difference is that in the latter show the woman was blamed for a marriage ended and in Nobody the boyfriend is blamed for it. I guess that’s progress.

Joanne is actually more burdened by this than Noah is in some ways: she has gotten out of constantly horrible relationships and Morgan keeps pointing out this is a pattern for her. One of the more interesting dynamics is that both Joanne and Noah have equally complicated family dynamics. Lynn, Joanne’s mother is an incredible oversharer of all things in her life and is still in love with her ex-husband even though he left her because he was gay. She freely talks about her UTIs and sexuality in a way that even children who do podcasts on “Dil-Dos and Dil-Don’ts”  start blushing when she starts talking. Morgan is clearly the elder sister and takes the dynamic of someone who is looking out for the family’s best interest, something that Joanne has never done very well.

Noah has an older brother Sasha (Timothy Simons finally gets to play a sympathetic character) a man who is clearly not his parent’s favorite and probably not even his wife’s, given their relationship. The moment Noah and Joanne run off to get drunk in Morgan’s car, he instantly hitches a ride and Morgan assumes he’s flirting with her until he points out the wedding ring he’s wearing. Esther is Rebecca’s best friend and she believes her relationship with Rebecca should take priority over his relationship with her. The brilliant character actors Tovah Feldshuh and Paul Ben-Victor play the Roklov parents and as generally the case these days, the mother is the one no one dares cross while the father is more empathetic to his son’s desires. (Of course, he makes it very clear that his wife should never know about this fact.)

I suspect the reason that Nobody Wants This is not a network show is because of the heavy issues of Judaism involved rather than anything else. As you’d expect there’s a fair amount of talk about sex in adult terms but in three episodes I have yet to see any and there has real been very little in the way of profanity either. One is reminded of the joke as to why David Chase couldn’t get The Sopranos sold to network television: the problem was so much the mob violence but the psychiatry that was too much for CBS.

Because this series, developed by Erion Foster and executive produced by such comedy legends as Steven Levitan, could very well play on a network like ABC and only have to slightly tame its language. What they would have a bigger problem with is the discussion of  religion and morality which, as in Bell’s previous masterpiece The Good Place,  is front and center as much as the jokes Bell makes about the kiss being so good it got her pregnant. Joanne, like Eleanor, is questioning whether she’s a good enough person to date a man of God and considering that her own family doesn’t think much of her morality its something she knows is an issue. Noah is wrestling with two struggles: whether he can be true to God or his heart or whether his will should be less important then his families. (One of the reasons you know Noah is Jewish is because the second is a far more pressing priority to him then the first.)

Bell is, surprise, surprise, superb. Brody is somewhat more of shock. Like Bell, he is a child star who has been acting in TV for the last quarter of a century, breaking through in The O.C and having been acting in TV ever since, sometimes in small roles  and mostly in failed series. He was, for one thing, the male lead in Billy and Billie a Neal Labute TV series where he gets in a relationship that is if anything far more taboo then this one. (He even had an arc on House of Lies.) Most of the series he’s worked in have been darker and edgier than this which is in part why his work as Noah is a revelation because he’s playing someone who is so basically good and with more of a moral compass.

It’s hardly a shock that Brody and Bell were nominated both Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards for their performances in this series. But honestly the entire cast is at their level. Feldshuh has been one of the premiere character actresses in TV since the days of Law & Order and she basically played a only slightly less parodic version of this kind of character in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Justine Lupe was best known for playing what amounted to the trophy girlfriend and wife of Connor on Succession and was probably the only actor in the entire cast who never got an Emmy nomination for her work on the show during its run. She gets to play a far warmer and more likable character here. And Simons, who known for being the butt of every horrible joke on Veep during its seven year run, finally gets to play someone we laugh far more with than we do at. He’s a nebbish but a good-hearted one.

I’m not surprised this series was quickly renewed for a second season though I remain unsure whether it will continue in its current form or an anthology. (After showrunner Erin Foster left at the end of the season, its unclear.) It continues the tradition started with Ted Lasso about us laughing with the follies of its characters rather than at their misfortunes. If it is not yet at the level of such masterpieces as Hacks, Shrinking or the recently departed Somebody Somewhere, it more than has the potential to be. To quote a cliché, we all want this  show. Hell, we need it.

My score: 4.25 stars.

This is Jeopardy - Failures of the SuperChampions Part 1

 

 

Like every other Jeopardy watcher in history I was as shocked as anybody when Cris Panullo was absolutely flattened in his Tournament of Champions this past March. Cris, as any fan of Jeopardy learned during the late fall of 2022, had been one of the most extraordinary players in Jeopardy history, winning 21 games and just under $750,000 during that period. He currently ranks sixth on the all-time list in games won and is in third place in money won in regular play, behind only Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider and James Holzhauer.

It wasn’t just the fact that he was beaten ; it was how horribly he was defeated by Jared Watson by three-game winner Jared Watson. Jared played masterfully that day, no question; but to that point Cris seemed invincible in his original run. In this game he very mortal and considering that he was the alternate for the first Jeopardy Masters it seemed odd that he was eliminated so quickly.

In retrospect I shouldn’t have been that surprised having been a long time Jeopardy viewer and having seen upsets in the Tournament of Champions essentially being the norm. And as we approach the 2025 Tournament of Champions I think it might be worth reviewing the past performance of super-champions, particularly during the Trebek era. While we don’t have the same level of super-champions we did last year, those who are anticipating an Adriana Havemeyer-Isaac Hirsch face off should be well aware that there is an excellent neither will get as far as the finals. I’m sure we were all expected a Cris Panullo-Ray Lalonde face-off last year and both Jared and Ike Barinholtz made sure that didn’t happen.

I’ve been watching the Tournament of Champions for the better part of thirty years and have seen probably that many TOC’s over the years. As those of us who are long-time viewers know, for the first twenty seasons of the show’s existence, the most games a player could win before leaving was capped at five. It’s also worth remembering that, until 2022, the Tournament of Champions had a different format.

Fifteen players were invited to play five quarterfinal matches. This would produce 5 winners and there would be four wild card spots for high scores among non-winners. Then after three semi-final matches there would be a two-game total point affair where the highest score after two games won the grand-prize ($100,000 until 2001; $250,000 afterwards.)

There’s an old cliché in sports: “anything can happen in a short series” and that’s true of a Tournament of Champions. That being said, the first decade I watched the show it was a lot more difficult to try and handicap it going forward than it would be after 2004. Essentially every player who qualified for the Tournament of Champions had more or less won the same number of games: four or five. This was true of winners of the special tournaments, which included the Teen Tournament, the College Championship and until 1996 the Seniors Tournament. (I will refer to that one in a different series). All of those tournaments followed the same format, and in that scenario you need to essentially win four games to win the Tournament.

So for all intents and purposes until 2022, all Tournament of Champions players were starting with a clean slate. That being said, it’s a lot easier to think that way when every participant has essentially won the same number of games going in. While it might seem counterintuitive that the winner of the College Championship could defeat not one but two players who’d won over $82,000 in their original appearances (I saw that happen in 1994) or that a player who had was ranked in winnings roughly dead last among the participants could win the Tournament of Champions that year (believe it or not, that was where Brad Rutter ranked going into the 2001 Tournament of Champions), considering that they were essentially all equal going in, it wasn’t really that big of a surprise.

Obviously this changed when the five game limit was removed starting in Season 20 and that became clear in what was the first Tournament of Champions where a super-champion appeared. (Ken Jennings didn’t appear in any traditional Tournament of Champions; his first post-season appearance was in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005.)

At the end of Season 21 and stretching to the start of Season 22 I like most Jeopardy fans was captivated by the performance of David Madden. Less than a year after Ken Jennings was defeated by Nancy Zerg, we saw a player who won nineteen games and $430,400. He was eventually defeated by a player named Victoria Groce, who won $22,801 and was defeated the following day. (Jeopardy fans would not hear of her again until this March when she managed to win first this year’s Jeopardy Invitational and then the second Jeopardy Masters.)

Like most fans I assumed that the winner of the next Tournament of Champions was all but spoken for after David was defeated. It wasn’t as though the roster of the 2006 was incredibly distinguished. There was an eight game winner Tom Kavanaugh and a six game winner Kevin Marshall. And there were an enormous number of three game winners: six in total, the highest until the 2023 Tournament of Champions. The fact that David was starting at the same level as all of his fellow participants didn’t register in my head.

David appeared in the fourth quarterfinal match against Bob Mesko, who won five games and Michael Falk, who’d won three. Things did not get off to a great start for David. Michael got off to an early lead and by the end of the Jeopardy round was still in a narrow first place. David recovered in Double Jeopardy, found both Daily Doubles and had a significant lead (though not a runaway) going into Double Jeopardy. He prevailed in Final Jeopardy and became an automatic semi-finalist though Bob and Michael would end up having high enough scores to earn wild card berths.

David then appeared in the second semi-final game against Kevin Marshall and Bill MacDonald, who’d won four games and just over $75,000. Bill took control of the game halfway through the Jeopardy round. And David had what was probably his worst game to that point in his Jeopardy career, giving 6 incorrect answers and finishing a distant third with $4600 to Bill’s $22,200. By that point Bill had runaway with the game. David was a good sport about it – his final Jeopardy response was: ”Congrats Bill good luck in the Final!” but that didn’t make it any less shocking to me. For the record Bill finished in third place in the TOC – losing to Michael Falk, who became the first three game winner of a Tournament of Champions.

In all my years of watching Jeopardy to that point David’s defeat in the 2006 Tournament of Champions was the most shocking loss I’d experienced. How could a player that great in regular play be so horrible in the Tournament of Champions? Perhaps it didn’t compute because I had no past experience with it.

 I would push this to the backburner for the next eight years that were to follow, a span which cover six more Tournament of Champions. The reason for this was simple: in that long span there was not a single Jeopardy champion who managed to reach double digits in wins. The two players who came the closest were Dan Pawson and Jason Keller, each of whom won nine games. Dan did so in Season 24; Jason in Season 28.

This led me to believe that the super-champions such as Jennings and Madden were outliers and the feat would likely never be repeated. I wasn’t surprised or unhappy by this, mainly because as someone who’d watched the show before the rule was lifted, I knew first-hand how difficult it was to win only five games. There may have been a few players before the five-game rule was lifted who could have been as good as, say, Matt Amodio or Mattea Roach but honestly, I can only think of seven, maybe eight in that period who were at that level and even that may be stretching it. That’s a sign of how special these kinds of players are; if every player was the caliber of a Cris Panullo Jeopardy would probably be a lot less entertaining.

Concurrently, the next six Tournaments were thrilling because there were no clear favorites because there is not the same difference between, say, a six game winner and a nine game winner as there is between someone who wins nineteen and someone who wins four. Dan Pawson seemed evenly matched when he faced off against Larissa Kelly in the 2009 Tournament of Champions, who had won six games but won considerably more money than him. And when Jason Keller was defeated in the semi-finals of the 2013 Tournament of Champions by Keith Whitener, it seemed less weird because Keith had won seven games. I thought, with one crucial exception, that all of the Tournament of Champions competitors between 2007 and 2013 were excellent players but not super.

The exception is one known to every Jeopardy viewer of the last twenty years. Despite the fact that he ‘only’ won six games before being defeated I doubt the long-time Jeopardy fan would disagree if I said Roger Craig was the most dominant player between Ken Jennings departure and the rise of super-champion. This would be true of every single player who won more games than him including David Madden. By the end of six games Alex Trebek was speaking of him in terms of Ken Jennings and even though he lost that day, I don’t think anyone who saw him at the time would dispute that analogy.

Because during a mere six games Roger Craig won $230,200 the third highest amount in Jeopardy history to that point in regular season play. By contrast at that point in his original run David Madden had only won $155,500; he needed ten games to win more than Roger did in six. Furthermore in only his second appearance Roger did something that I’m sure every Jeopardy fan to that point thought unthinkable: broke Ken Jennings’ one day record of $75,000. He won $77,000 and his mark lasted nearly nine years until James Holzhauer came along.

Roger was a prototype of the super-champion that Holzhauer and his successors would illustrate. He would frequently start at the bottom of every category (usually in Double Jeopardy) and bet very big in Daily Doubles and almost always get them right. He could be as dominant as this group, averaging thirty correct responses in each of his six wins. He averaged just $39,000 per win and was one of the most dominant players of all time. Until the arrival of James Holzhauer, it would be fair to state he might have been the third best Jeopardy player in the show’s entire history behind just Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

So going into the 2011 Tournament of Champions I was absolutely certain Roger would waltz to victory. By that point, I should mention he wasn’t the winningest player in that Tournament in terms of games won or money won. Tom Nissley, just a few months after Roger was defeated, had won eight games and $235,405. (That total would be the third place total in money won until 2014.) And in October of 2011 Joon Pahk was a very impressive seven games and $199,000 even. I don’t know if I was aware of this at the time (in 2011 I was not following Jeopardy tournaments at the same level I would be in the next five years) but I’m sure even if I had, it would not have one difference in my thinking: Roger Craig was the best player in the 2011 Tournament of Champions and he was going to romp to the grand prize.

And in my defense that’s exactly what Roger did. He absolutely crushed his opponents Kara Spak and Brian Meacham in the quarterfinals, with $39,800 at the end of Double Jeopardy. He faced off against Joon Pahk in his semi-final match and while it was close for a while, he ended up with a slightly narrower runaway victory. And while one of his opponents in the final was none other than Tom Nissley, for all intents and purposes the Tournament was decided by the end of Game 1. He’d amassed $43,200 by the end of Double Jeopardy. I had never seen any player have that high a total at the end of Double Jeopardy to that point in a Tournament of Champions game; not even James Holzhauer managed to get that high in any of his. He responded correctly and had an even $50,000 at the end of Game 1 to his nearest opponent (Tom) $18,800. I think even Alex knew it was all over sans the shouting. In Game 2 Roger had what for him was an off day, getting 25 correct response but making eight mistakes. It didn’t matter. Neither of his opponents were nearly good enough to in the game to do anything and Roger ended up easily winning the Tournament of Champions.

I’ve seen dominant performances by many players in the Tournaments of Champions while it was in that format,  some of whom did better than Roger when it came to games won. No one – not even James Holzhauer – was that brilliant in every game they played. For that reason, despite his relatively minor win total and money won, Roger Craig has to be ranked as one of the greatest Jeopardy players of all time. With the possible exception of Brad Rutter, he is my odds on pick to be invited back to next year’s Jeopardy Masters. I think everyone – including Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer himself – want to see him go head to head with James.

Roger, I should mention, was always modest and self-effacing throughout his original run and beyond: the complete opposite of Holzhauer. Watching him Roger had the appearance of Bruce Banner. You never thought he was the Hulk until he found a Daily Double. Even when he played against him Ken Jennings couldn’t help but think of him in terms of being little better than a  fanboy. I’d love to see what he thinks now that he’s safely on the other side of the lectern.

In the conclusion of this article I’ll discuss the performances of the remainder of the super-champions during the era of Alex Trebek in their respective Tournament of Champions and how as easy as it was in their original appearance winning the grand prize was often far more difficult…if not impossible.

How Truman Didn't Start The Cold War, Interlude: The Decision to Drop The Atomic Bomb And Why The Argument About Its Morality Is Fundamentally Flawed

 

Perhaps my sole objection to Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece Oppenheimer was the famous encounter between Oppenheimer and Truman as it portrayed in the film. While Nolan accurately reports Oppenheimer’s famous exchange: “I feel I have blood on my hands” as well as Truman’s wiping it off with a handkerchief, saying “the blood is on my hands’ my problem is how Gary Oldman interprets the role.

In this scene Truman seems incredibly arrogant as if he can barely be bothered to give the scientist the time of day. When Oppenheimer delivers his line, Truman’s reaction is that of arrogance: “You think anyone gives a damn about who made the bomb.” And his uttering of the famous line is that of someone who can barely be bothered with the decision that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. He did call Oppenheimer ‘a crybaby’ but only after the troubled scientist was out of earshot (though I suspect that was purely for dramatic license).

To give Nolan the benefit of the doubt the film is seen entirely from Oppenheimer’s perception of events and is necessary to explain his actions from that point forward. The problem is it plays in to the general perception of Truman’s use of the weapon not only by many revisionist historians for more than half a century. And it speaks to a larger bias about one of the most significant decisions in world history with the same kind of lens that the left in particular is keen to use.

This may have started with the fiftieth anniversary of the Enola Gay’s dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Countless historians began to argue that the bomb’s dropping was completely unnecessary to end the war in the Pacific or to save American lives. These arguments had been a rejection of the ones both Truman and Stimson have made argued that Japan was on the verge of surrender and that the dropping of the bombs were solely to demonstrate American might in the face of the Soviet Union, a decision that seems to justify the start of the Cold War. This changed the debate from the necessity of the bomb as to why is was used. In this interpretation Japan was willing to surrender and Truman decided to use the bomb just to exercise the man of America on the Soviets, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese just to flex in front of Stalin.

Fundamentally this argument operates much in the ideology of leftist dogma when it comes to so many of the more significant decisions in American history practically from the founding. It eliminates every other consideration at the time – economic, domestic, geopolitical – and reduces it strictly to a moral argument, with a right decision and a wrong one and as always America made the wrong one. Like almost every argument the left makes it is done with the benefit of hindsight, particularly those of an academic environment. This is, like every argument the left makes, fundamentally flawed and in this case, it misconstrues  the role of the President.

There are two fundamental errors in this thinking about Truman’s process during this period. The first is that the President of the United States has many responsibilities as the leader of the country. Morality and ethics play a role, it can’t be denied, but it has always been much lower on the list that the left believes it should be. And whatever morality he has to consider, it must be what is best for America and the rest of the world must by necessity play a secondary role. Truman was the President of the United States, not Germany, not Russia, certainly not Japan. He had to worry about what they would think of his decisions, not what the rest of the world would think. And he must consider it through other lenses.

That leads to the second fundamental flaw: Truman was acting not as the morality czar, but in his role as commander-in-chief while America was still at war. America was entering its fourth year of fighting when he became President and while the war in Europe was over, the War in the Pacific was still going on and American soldiers were dying horribly in the Pacific every day. Whatever moral responsibility he felt had to be for the American lives that were being lost first as well as the families at home who were worried about their fathers, sons and husbands. The longer the war went on, more American soldiers would die. Truman himself said “The Buck Stopped Here” and that was true in this case. Furthermore Truman himself had seen combat and knew first-hand how horrible wartime battle was. This had to have entered his thinking as well

So in this brief interval I will focus on the decision to drop the atomic bombs in the first place from the role as commander-in-chief. Only then will I ask the question whether it was a moral decision. I should say, however, that wars are never thought based on the morality of nations or their leader. Everyone involved, from the leaders of the countries to the military leaders to the soldiers involved, is engaged in actions that will led to the deaths of other human beings which makes them by that definition immoral no matter who is fighting them. Each nation – not just America or Western ones, but all of them – believe that they are fighting for their ‘way of life’ and that justifies the slaughter of residents of other nation’s who are fighting for their ‘way of life’. Any military struggle is not one by who has the greatest values but the biggest armies and the best weapons. Morality never enters in to the thinking of the leaders, and if it does it is only for the soldiers under them. That is as true for the Soviets and the Japanese as it is for the Americans and the British. So I fundamentally believe this is a ‘straw man’ argument from the start but nevertheless I will try to attempt an answer.

First it is worth noting that the Japanese government or military had made no encouragement in the leadup to the decision to give either Truman or James Byrnes any indication that they were willing to surrender. Indeed certain civilian officials in Tokyo were attempting through backchannels with in enlisting the Soviet Union in a peace settlement that did not involve an unconditional surrender as America had demanded and obtained from Germany in May. After the Potsdam declaration was announced the Prime Minister of Japan publicly dismissed them on July 28^th and two days later, made it clear to a senior cabinet official in which he questioned that the Allies had the stomach to continue the war. This followed a six month bombing campaign by General Curtis LeMay which had left no sizable city untouched.

During that same period American intelligence had determined that troop levels in Kyushu were building to a level that Douglas MacArthur’s chief aide feared that they would grow to a point where when the Americans invaded the home islands, they would be fighting on even terms. He made clear “this was not the recipe for victory.” Not a single military leader disagreed with the opinion that the Japanese were girding for Armageddon and had no intention of surrendering.

It's worth noting that Truman and the American leaders ‘simply’ considered the atomic bomb another weapon in their arsenal to use against the Japanese. What revisionists have since considered alternatives – a naval blockade, continued conventional bombing, the threat of invasion and Soviet entry into the war – were in fact considered complements to the use of the bomb. And Truman was very aware that it was only after every weapon in the arsenal had been exhausted that America would then have to invade the home islands which was scheduled for the spring of 1946.

The decision, it’s worth noting, had been considered by a group of scientists as well as military advisers while FDR was still alive. Truman had made no alterations in his war cabinet (besides Byrnes) and men such as Henry Stimson, still the Secretary of War, had been critical in the decision making the decision for the use of the bomb. And while Truman was returning from Potsdam, he was increasingly aware of the Navy and Air Force’s relentless attempts to pound the Japanese into submission. Indeed on route to America, he no doubt learned of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis by a Japanese submarine that left barely a quarter of the crew alive  - the worst American catastrophe at sea during the war. It served as a horrible reminder – as if America needed any – about the Japanese intention to defend their homeland.

On August 6^th 1945, the Enola Gay dropped the bomb known as ‘Little Boy’ on the city of Hiroshima. When Truman was informed of it, he was deeply moved and proclaimed to the sailors “this is the greatest thing in history.” An observant reporter remembered him almost running as he moved about the ship spreading the news. He could not keep back his expectation the war in the Pacific might at last be over – the only consideration he should have had at the time.

The real audience for his thoughts were back in Japan. Provision had been made for a statement back in Potsdam to be issued as soon as confirmation came through. It gave the basic details of the attack and an elemental description of  the new weapon that allowed America to win “the battle of the laboratories against the Germans.” (I’ll return to that later) The statement made it very clear that it was meant to shock and intimidate the Japanese to surrender unconditionally and  that “we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.” He also made clear that the Potsdam ultimatum had been issued the spare ‘the Japanese people from utter destruction” but that the Japanese leaders had rejected it:

“If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind the air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.”

Truman had inherited FDR’s responsibility the strategy of keeping American losses to a minimum and he was committed to carrying it out for the remainder of the war. On August 8^th the Soviet Union did declare war on Japan, but it is worth noting they believed they had to enter the war immediately in case the Japanese chose to surrender soon after Hiroshima. It was considered a given by Americans that Manchuria was going to fall under Russian control regardless whatever happened elsewhere in the Pacific.

On August 9^th Truman address the nation on radio, referring to the Soviet entry to the war and increasing warnings to the Japanese. By that point the Japanese cabinet had learned of the bombing of Hiroshima and was aware more bombs might be coming.

The Supreme Leadership was divided on what to do next. The civilian leaders of the government (the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Navy Minister) favored the acceptance of the terms at Potsdam. But the military government rejected such an idea and made it clear they preferred to fight on unless the Allies agreed to “self-disarmament, Japanese control of any war-crimes trial and no Allied occupation of Japan.” As a historian later put it: “these terms would permit, at some later and better moment, Japan’s warriors to inculcate a myth that they were never really defeated and only of their own volition laid down arms to spare the world more ravages of war.”

While they were meeting the first news came of the second bomb being dropped on Nagasaki. Even then there was still no consensus of what to do next. Because unanimity was required for any decision to be presented to the emperor, Suzuki left for the palace that evening to explain the situation to Hirohito. He advised the Emperor to convene an Imperial Conference to hear for himself the arguments of the leadership.

According to the most measured accounts of the meeting afterwards, the division remained on the same lines. The civilian government demanded acceptance of terms at Potsdam; the military wanted to fight ‘to the very last.’ Eventually Suzuki asked the Emperor to weigh in. He concluded:

“the time has come when we must bear the unbearable…I swallow my own tears and give my sanction to accept the Allied proclamation.” The Japanese government agreed on the condition that the Emperor’s sovereignty remained intact.

Surprisingly the key American officials were not gathered together in expectation of an immediate surrender. More tellingly, they didn’t expect one to be immediately forthcoming. Stimson was actually planning to go on vacation because he was sure immediate surrender was far from imminent.

The first news of the offer came courtesy of American code breakers. When Truman heard these reports he asked Leahy to gather Stimson, Byrnes and Forrestal together at 9:00 am to review the situation. Leahy and Stimson encouraged the President to accept the terms but Byrnes held back. According to what he later told an associate, he pointed out that “they should go further in concessions then when we had no atomic bomb and Russia was not in the war.” Byrnes intervention proved successful and the meeting shelved Leahy’s memorandum of accepting the Japanese surrender  which as Byrnes’s point out later “who have led to the crucifixion of the President.” Instead Truman accepted the suggestion of Forrestal to draft a reply to indicate ‘willingness to accept yet define terms of surrender in such a manner that the intents and purposes of the Potsdam declaration would be clearly accomplished.” He charged Byrnes with drafting such a reply.

The two men met at noon and then they prepared for a full cabinet meeting two hours later. They drafted messages to London, Moscow and Chungking requesting approval of the terms that set forth ‘from the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers.” It called for the Emperor to call on Japanese forces to lay down arms. These terms were sent to the Allies. The British and Chinese agreed immediately but the Soviets did more slowly and more grudgingly.

When the Emperor met with his advisers that day, once again there was major division. Only Foreign Minister Togo was in favor of immediate acceptance and the War Minister opposed them. Suggestions that Japan should surrender were met with disbelief and rejection from the War Ministry and officers in the field. The military was actively gearing up to reverse any decision made.

The Emperor had to intervene directly and made a broadcast to his people explaining the necessity of ending the war. Even this did not end the matter. Military figures throughout Japan attempted to kill their opponents, seize and destroy the recording with the Emperor’s broadcast and essentially overthrow the government. Several soldiers targeted ministers in the civilian government and the Imperial Palace itself was occupied. But the War Minister refused to endorse plans for a coup and officers loyal to the emperor managed to put down the rebellion.

It is worth noting even Hirohito’s message to the military never included such words as ‘defeat’, ‘surrender’ or ‘capitulation’. It was framed instead in terms of the best interest of Japan  and that because of atomic bomb “should We continue to fight, it would…result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese.” The next day an imperial ceasefire order was issued and the Emperor enlisted the support of his family to ensure the Army and Navy commands obeyed.

However on August 15^th when Stalin was provided with a copy of the initial order of surrender, Stalin immediately imposed that the Soviets enlarge their realm by occupying Hokkaido in the North. Two days later Truman rejected this out of hand, but this didn’t stop the leader of the Soviet theater commander from seeking Moscow’s permission to seize the island before the surrender could be made to the Americans. Operations were slowed due to resistance on Sakhalin, the proposed launching point for the attack and on August 22^nd Stalin told the leader to halt his plans. But it is clear that the Soviets had every intention of occupying as much of Japan as possible.

One would think that all of this would make it unmistakably clear that regardless of revisionists, the atomic bombs were the most critical tool in bringing about the end of the war in the Pacific. The Japanese military, even after the dropping of those bombs, were more than willing to fight until the last man, were more than willing to slaughter hundreds of thousands of Americans to do just that and were on the verge of overthrowing the Emperor rather than accept any alternative.

This comes back to the decision whether the decision Truman made was a morally correct one. As I stated above Truman’s moral responsibility was, first and foremost to the American people, both the civilians at home and the millions overseas. Had he not authorized that attacks, thousands more American military forces would almost certainly have been lost as well as the thousands of allied prisoners that the Japanese were planning to execute. Truman would have to deal with a far more moral struggle had he had let all of those soldiers die with an option that would have saved them. And that is without considering the hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians who would have died if their had been an invasion.

This moral criticism started almost immediately after the bombing of Nagasaki. Truman was disturbed by the dropping of the bomb but in a defense he pointed out:

“I was greatly disturbed by the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our Prisoners of War. The only language the Japanese seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.”

He held to this point of view long after the war ended, accurately pointing out ‘the double standard of morality’ by critics of the A-bomb who somehow never criticized the attacks on Pearl Harbor. In a letter he drafter but never sent to the diplomatic historian Herbet Feis – who in his typically blunt style he described as ‘the usual egghead’ he went on to note it was “a great thing that you or any other contemplator ‘after the fact’ didn’t have to make a decision. Our boys would all be dead. “

And it is not as though Truman alone had ‘blood on his hands’. More than fifty million died in World War II.  The old order of morality crumbled in the crucible of total war. The enemy was not merely soldiers but combatants who worked in factories, ran the economy, maintained the civic life, constituted much of the nation, and were the core of national cohesion.” Both FDR and Churchill approved aerial bombardment of so many horrible cities that Curis Lemay, no shrinking violet, would confide later that if America had lost the war, he and all who worked for him would have been tried for war crimes. All of these bombings – including Tokyo – took place under FDR’s watch.

Yet somehow Truman alone seems to bear the brunt of the moral assessment of the war. Indeed there has been a constant deluge of criticisms of American and British actions in the more than eighty years since, both non-fictional and fictional. (The fire-bombing of Dresden was the influence for Slaughterhouse Five to use the most famous example.) And yet the Japanese’s morality never seems to merit the same consideration. The Japanese perpetrated mass atrocities throughout the Pacific, particularly in China. Nearly ten million Chinese, the vast majority non-combatants, were killed during that period. In the last eight months of the war, deaths at Japanese hands of civilians totaled upwards of 100,000 people per month.

And it’s worth noting that, much like the South after the Civil War, post-war Japanese leaders effectively played up their own roles as victims to induce a certain guilt in a certain part of the population. This blinds revisionists from the fact that the military leaders were so devoted to preserving the emperor that they let every opportunity to end a war that they were losing until it was too late.  Why is it only American leaders have to bear the conscience of the morality of the entire world, including those military in Japan whose determination was to lead their entire nation on what was going to  be a kamikaze campaign rather than surrender?

Yes in the dictionary definition of the term Truman’s actions were immoral. He ordered the bombings of cities which thousands of non-combatants, among them the elderly, the impaired, women and children all lived. But isn’t the ledger balanced by the hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives that were spared by the invasion that was being planned and the tens of thousands of soldiers whose lives would have lost in such a battle?

And this actually leads to one more point that all of this moral arithmetic lays out but which Oppenheimer makes very clear. The Nazis themselves were working on such a bomb and the Americans were in a race against them. We hardly need ask the question if Hitler would have shown the same kind of moral reckoning if a bomb had been made available to the Nazis as to whether they would have used or that the leadership would have had any definition of what ‘innocent lives’ were.

That fact played a key factor in much of what was going on in the invasion of Europe. Stalin was as aware of the Germans work on the atomic bomb as he was the Americans. One of the reasons he insisted that the Soviets occupy Berlin – three full months before Truman told him of America’s successful development of the weapon – was because he was planning for the future. He knew Berlin had a supply of uranium that would be useful to the Soviets in a post-war world. And there are many indications that he would have been willing to engage in conflict with the Americans in order to maintain it.

This leads to the final fallacy that Truman dropped the bomb solely to flex his might over Stalin. Stalin already knew about this weapon well before the Japanese did. And as we shall see he was already making plans for necessities after the fighting stopped.

In the next article I will deal with the resumption of the so-called ‘atomic diplomacy’ and how the Americans certainly didn’t have a picture of a post-war world for much of the first full year of Truman’s administration.