Nikole Hannah-Jones Put The Good of Society Ahead of Her Daughter. She Still Doesn't Realize Who The Victim Was.

 

A little more than three years ago I began a series for medium which was one of  my first real forays into contemporary issues in 'Educating About Education'

The thesis for my article, which I believe is still very much on point, was simple:

Everybody has something to say: Democrats, Republicans, talking heads, parents, the media, people who don’t live the state, people who don’t attend the schools. Every single person who has a voice in this fight has been quoted, interviewed or made a tweet. We’ve heard from everybody in America on this subject.

Except, of course, the people who everyone claims that this is about. The children who go to these schools.  I am not surprised by this because for everything we claim to be doing for our children, in reality it is all just another one in a long line of proxy wars that every single group in the world is fighting for through someone else. 

The impetus for the series was the one that I took the longest time to get to: the battle for integration of public schools.  This led me to Ruby Bridges and while I started my article with a trigger warning of sorts I didn't hold back in my opinion:

Ruby Bridges was six years old when she became the first African-American child to attend a whites-only school in Louisiana. According to the page on Wikipedia, her parents responded to a request from the NAACP to volunteer to participate in the integration of the New Orleans school system. Her father was resistant but went along because her mother thought this was better to give her daughter a better education but to take this step forward for all African-American children.

‘Volunteered her’. We’ve seen the famous portrait by Norman Rockwell. According to Bridges, “she saw the crowd” but because she lived in New Orleans, “she thought it was Mardi Gras.” She was walked to school by marshals, who were proud of her courage. Did anybody even consider the fact that she might not have comprehended what was happening to her?

Only one person in the entire school agreed to teach Bridges. For one year, that teacher taught her along as if she were teaching a whole class.

Bridges was threatened with poison, marshals only allowed her to eat the food she brought from home. She could not participate in recess.

We commemorate Ruby Bridges as a hero. In actuality she went through an entire year of intense trauma, threats of violence and was essentially isolated from a proper educational experience in the name of progress. And there’s no indication she was asked if she wanted to do this. She was ‘volunteered’. Her parents basically put her through a year of immense torment that no doubt has to have given her immense emotional scars that probably she has had to deal with for the rest of her life. The fact that Bridges has essentially disappeared from public view not long after this happened is hardly surprising.

I remember discussing this with a friend of mine who is similar to me in his politics but blunter in his dialogue. He told me point blank that Ruby Bridges's parent were guilty of child abuse in his opinion. I didn't state that directly in my article (though I came very close to saying it outright) but I've always felt their was much truth to that:

To be clear I believe entirely in civil rights, in every aspect of integration, in every aspect of equality. I have little doubt people will read the previous paragraph and call me a bigot regardless. But look at the world we live in now. Just as it was fifty years ago, children are still at the center of wars they don’t understand as to why they are being fought.  Many of them didn’t ask to be put at the center of these wars, but their parents, then as now, considered their concerns irrelevant to the battles they are waging.  That these battles are being fought in a world that most of the combatants never set foot it should not shock us – the soldiers are never a factor to the generals or politicians.

I was reminded of all this with crystal clarity when I read an article online in the Times Magazine this weekend. The headline and the Lede tell you why:

In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?

A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter's education that I hoped would challenge New York City's separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.

Perhaps it should come as little surprise that the author of this article is none other than Nikole Hannah-Jones whose 1619 Project has been condemned by major historians almost since it came out and that Hannah-Jones never backed away from. I had little reason to like Hannah-Jones as a historian or a writer; now I know for certain she is a reprehensible human being who is more interested in making a point then she is about fixing the problem.

The entire article, for the record, makes clear her narcissism in a way that is even less attractive. Even though it's clear from the opening paragraph that her own daughter believes that her mother has betrayed her for a cause she didn't know she was fighting, Hannah-Jones first instinct is to nevertheless make the story about the system and its failures.  This is not an apology to society or her own daughter but an argument in the paper of record to try and frame it so her daughter Najya is the victim of the system and not her parents. And just to be clear most of the article has less to do with Nayja's suffering or the recriminations but Hannah-Jones restating the argument about America is a racist society and still using her daughter as a proxy.

Hannah-Jones says that both she and her husband has managed to avoid segregated schools and had attended integrated ones. She acknowledges "the integrated education my husband and I received set the foundation that has allowed us to become the successful middle-class family that my daughter was born into. In other words she is a child who has bene the beneficiary of her system.

To be clear Hannah Jones compares herself – with no apparent irony – to the generations of black parents who made these decisions "based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage. Faraji (her husband) and I decided that our role in this struggle meant upending the status quo and sending our child not to a wealthy white school but a poor black one."

This is how she puts it:

We thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and Black school, we could help improve it for all the children there. I knew that P.T.A.s at poor schools often can raise only a few thousand dollars but Faraji and I could write checks that exceeded the annual P.T.A budget…I believed Faraji and I could bring some of that power with us. We had connections and time and status should not matter, but that we all know do. And more than that, we believed strongly that if families like ours went into schools like this one, it would challenge other families with similar values to ours."

Note the constant use of we and ours. Hannah-Jones has the arrogance of so many left-wing people – and that I see in our current President – that she, her money and time could succeed where generations had failed. This narcissism alone is bad enough before you consider that, just like those generations of black parents before her, she 'volunteered Najya to participate'. And to remind you the generations before were far poorer and has less opportunities then Hannah-Jones had and admitted she benefited from.

To be clear Hannah-Jones decided to write an essay for the Times Magazine and put her daughter on the cover. Hannah-Jones insists she wasn't planning to do this but we're only getting her version of events and I have little doubt she is no different from any other progressive who wants to speak about a cause when she's really talking about herself talking about the cause. She also points out how much personal, public response she received and how much activism she led. "In the outside world my choice had earned me valor."

At this point Nayja confronts her which is in seventh grade: "Did you know my school was bad like this when you put me here?" Hannah-Jones tries to deny but then her daughter tells her that she has looked up her school.

Hannah-Jones then says:

I told her everything I had said a hundred times on stages, in interviews, in discussions since I had made her a symbol of how the choices we make can help sustain – or dismantle – equality.

I bet a thirteen year old girl must have loved being told that her mother referred to her as 'a symbol' rather than her daughter. Her daughter had no room for this nonsense:

"So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?" she said, hurling her words. "Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn't want to put me in a great school?

If everything her mother hadn't been enough to make me feel love for Nayja Hannah-Jones that statement – said at thirteen – would have sealed the deal. In a single sentence she has dismantled the myth that her mother has built up around her, justifying everything that we've seen her do all that time. The fact that Hannah-Jones now admits that she failed "both my values and my child" is telling. Even an article that is about her child, she lists that failing her values as the first point.

The next several articles detail that as early as first grade Nayja is making it clear just how bad it is for her at school. Hannah-Jones is an active parent and witnesses much of the chaos that unfolds but continues to shift the blame to others – the faculty, the teachers., the aides. She points out that by this point all but one of the white children and the middle class children who started the school with Najya left but "we felt we could not abandon the school and our convictions at the moment we experienced the dysfunctions we knew defined so many of the segregated schools serving poor black children. We had to stay and fight for the students who did not have options."

The italics are mine because I'm pretty sure Hannah-Jones didn't retreat because she wanted to abandon neither the savior trope she'd decided she had nor the fact that the left never admits defeat even in the sight of clear failure. They put their convictions ahead of their daughter – and again, they didn't have to.

Hannah-Jones talks in great detail about how her daughter was clearly started to suffer academically and failing in both reading and multiple subjects. Rather than try to help their daughter – who should be their priority – they continue to visit the principal and get the superintendent involved. They also acknowledge they got private tutoring for Najya but made no effort to take her out of the school.

And she doesn't hide it:

Our child was suffering, but all these children were – they were languishing in classrooms with educators who did not take their academic potential seriously and largely refused to teach. What would happen to those children if we abandoned them as everyone else in power had?

Again Hannah Jones and her husband still refuse to put their own daughter ahead of 'the greater good' even though by this point it has been five years of no real results. And to be very clear there were many ways to do what she did that did not involve making her daughter a personal sacrifice: she could have withdrawn her child and continued to help from behind the scenes. In fact after she graduates the elementary school, she then doubles down and enrolls her in a middle school that is very much just as bad.

At that point Najya makes it clear she was going to prep for an exam for a prestigious high school that admits on a single entrance exam. She and her husband oppose them and as a result hadn't discussed them with her daughter. I think the only reason she agrees with this is that they'd had the confrontation in the car and there have been countless arguments between mother and daughter, which Hannah-Jones ever the writer, no doubt edited out.

By the time she reaches eighth grade Nayja is forces the decision

I explained our decision over and over but my answers never satisfied her. "But what did it do?" she'd ask. "Putting me in this school didn't change anything. I was not trying to be in this type of environment. It makes no sense."

Now I have no doubt this is the mildest version (and most printable) Najya gave her mother over the years.

I respected her growing independence…but it also unsettled me. Her adamance started to seed a fear that if I continued to force her to live my values, it could haunt our relationship far past her school years.

Again I'm pretty sure this is the mother's version of events to make herself seem the heroine and again she frames the decision to let her daughter make her own decision – but again she limits it by saying she has to choose a 'public school'

Najya, to be clear, chooses a school that is very much 'the type of public school she has spent her career arguing against'. But it's clear Najya makes it very clear that the link between race and educational opportunity is clear to her daughter.

But again Hannah-Jones makes it clear that the real agony is her own:

How could I spare myself the judgment I had meted out to others when they justified why they – despite believing in integration – sent their own children to schools that entrenched inequality?

The obvious answer is that a good parent, regardless of their race, wants what's best for their child. It's telling Hannah-Jones seems more upset that she betrayed the cause then her own daughter. This could be seen as ordinary teenage rebellion – and far more moderate and justifiable then so many – but Hannah-Jones makes it about her. Then when things get bad for her daughter culturally and academically Hannah-Jones seems almost smug at her for making the bad choice. As for her daughter's failures – very much the cause of the kind of education her mother basically forced upon her without consent – she can only manage to achieve her goals by the benefit of the privilege that comes with the wealth Hannah-Jones inherited as a benefit.

Tellingly the story ends not with Najya's graduation but Hannah-Jones bringing he daughter to talk with the principal from her own school.

And the essay ends basically still about the mother more than the daughter:

For years I had been defending my decision to Nayja, trying hard to balance empathy for her with the justification of her father's and my choices. I wanted my child to see it my way; to see the struggles she was having as part of a lineage and a mandate, to understand the tremendous privilege that I believed inoculated her against the worst consequences of the dysfunction and at times educational malpractice that she and her classmates experienced.

Najya's answer speaks volumes:

"Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me, I never really got the education I wanted."

Hannah-Jones said: "I realized what she'd been yearning for most was my acknowledgement that she had borne thee cost not only of our unjust society but also my ideals." And then to undercut it: "In this, Najya had become part of a long, unwanted tradition in Black communities."

Just to drive the point home she openly uses the story of Ruby Bridges and makes it clear yet again that, all her words and contrition to the contrary, there's still a part of her that believes she was playing a role of one of those people all those year's ago, that some day her daughter's sacrifice will be worth it. The fact that she is still willing to monetize her own daughter's suffering and neglect as a story for her own brand

My sympathy, as you might expect, is entirely for Najya Hannah-Jones who was used as a pawn by her parents in a battle she didn't ask to fight, who when she called her mother on it, her mother was more interested in defending her decision then her daughter, who is still as much a symbol to her mother than she may ever have been a child, whose mother really still seems to care more about the state of the world then her own daughter's happiness.

I see you, Najya Hannah-Jones, even though I'm not sure your mother ever truly did.  You were drafted into a battle not only without your consent, but your parents had no reason to put you through. You paid the cost for your parents convictions, and their decision to keep putting you through even in the sign of the clear pain and suffering you were feeling is as much neglect and abuse as so many of the children that do suffer from these problems but don't have the means your parents do. Your parents chose essentially to cosplay you in the world of segregated education not for your own good but for their well-being, their status, their recognition. And even now its clear your mother doesn't see the damage she's done you and still sees you only as  a mirror for her actions. They have forced you into what will no doubt  takes years of therapy to overcome – and that you are fortunate to have the funds to deal with it.

I suspect your mother's version of events is the mildest version but your independence and clarity shows that somehow you managed to come through the other side. So what I think the world needs to hear – and deserves to – is your version of events. What was the cost of being the symbol of your mother's values?

You don't have to tell this story now, or ever. But you should know that if and when you do, there will be people like me who will have your back and support you for it.  Your mother is not the victim in this story, you are. If you were to permanently cut off ties with them when you graduate from college I think countless millions could blame you.

And always remember: the system did not fail you. Your parents did. Your mother had delusions of grandeur combined with the fanaticism of a true believer and chose to make you the cause. She forgot you were a child first. And that is a crime as bad as anything you will face in America today.

And as to your mother, the question you raised was not rhetorical. And I'm pretty sure daughter knows it too.

 

 

 

Women Should Serve In Every Political Office. I'm Not Sure Her Bold Move Truly Does.

 

 

One of the oldest cliches in recent years is 'representation matters'.  I'd say that those who make that blanket statement are getting it wrong. Representation matters, yes, but only in a few critical areas. And the one where it matters the most  is elected office.

This isn't an abstraction to me because I live in New York  where women serve in the most important offices in the state and at a national level. Kathy Hochul is running for her second full term as Governor. Two years ago Kristin Gillibrand was reelected as Senator. And if the Democrats regain control of Congress this year – as looks increasingly likely – it will be because women such as Laura Gillen and Cait Conley were elected in swing districts.

All of these women have come under the same kind of brutal attacks from Republicans that are associated with members of the Squad (and yes a few more members of the Justice Democrats will likely be joining the Democratic caucus from New York this cycle). But it is my belief they represent the best of government because they understand who their masters are: their party, their country and their voters. 

In theory these are the masters that all elected officials are supposed to serve though it seldom works that way in practice. In recent years extremists of both parties have argued that there is a different agenda every elected official, regardless of party should serve, and they criticize those who don't meet those metrics. Having spent far too much time among both groups I feel safe in saying the far left has higher standard.

Both sides will actively hold those in office to an impossibly high standard. But those on the far right will always limit their attacks to Democrats whether they are in office or not and defend the Republicans. The progressive, by contrast, will attack both parties and will, if anything, be harsher on the Democrats then the Republicans. They will lambast them whenever they do something that they consider wrong and give them only faint praise if they do something they believe is right.

They believe the far left agenda is the only one that all elected officials should follow, even if they didn't run on it. And they have no use for an elected candidate serving any of those three masters. The only master they should serve is the progressive agenda, no matter how unpopular with the electorate it is.

For that reason I am wary of organizations who claim to be arguing for not only a left-wing agenda but who argue that it is the elected officials duty to serve only a specific group of identity politics. And that brings me to Her Bold Move.

I've been receiving missives from them for several years, as I have so many other Democratic candidates and left-wing missives but I didn't know much about them until recently. Her Bold Move was founded in 2021 as – and I'm quoting them – a PAC that supports women running for political office in the United States, with a specific focus on breaking male supermajorities and protecting reproductive rights in states with abortion bans.

As I said, I'm in favor of women hold political offices at any level, particularly a state one as well as protecting reproductive rights. Yet there are a couple of things in this that set off alarm bells.

The first is the timing. By 2021, as I've written before, the Justice Democrats had gone through two election cycles and had essentially failed as it mission statement. It had only managed to elect 6 representatives to Congress, no Senators and no governors and in most cases couldn't get past the primary. Furthermore many Democrats had tacitly endorsed parts of the Sanders/AOC agenda that year and the Democrats had suffered losses in Congress even as they took back the White House. The voters were endorsing a return to normality but not the left-wing agenda.

The second part is the tacit idea that female Democrat officeholders at a state level can serve the agenda of women better then Democratic candidates alone. There's a fallacy here because all elected officials, no matter their race, gender or sexual identification, have to win elections by getting the votes of everybody. A female candidate can't win elected office if she only gets the votes of women and that means she's going to having to appeal to issues that are not only limited to women.. Taken to the next level, if she wins elected office she is there to represent all the people in her district or state, not just the people who voted for her. Kathy Hochul is governor of New York and she represents all of them, not just the Democrats, and certainly not just all the women – some of whom almost certainly will vote for Bruce Blakeman in November.

These combinations, as with so many other progressive groups, seem to force Her Bold Move to run candidates with both hands tied behind their backs. Which is why it's not clear how successful they've been at their mission statement. That brings me to a different factor.

According to Google Her Bold Move reports that its endorsed candidates have won roughly 85-88 percent of their races." That sounds impressive until you read that 'it doesn't maintain a direct running list or a public directory'. And like many other groups it only highlights the candidates who win and ignores the ones who lose. Nor does it keep a static historical archive of past winners – or those who've lost.

You have to rely on other organization to check their record so I looked on Ballotpedia, one of the more verifiable sources for it. That site tells a different story then the one Her Bold Move trumpets.

They have endorsed high profile federal and statewide figures such as attorneys general and gubernatorial hopefuls, but the bulk of them target state legislative seats, county clerk positions and local school boards. Now I suspect that 85 to 88 percent success rate is built very much the same way our current President picks his endorsements for state and federal office: Her Bold Move will pick Democratic candidates (presumably all female), most of whom I assume are favored to win anyway and that counts them as part of their record.

Ballotpedia tells a different story. They list 84 candidates who meet Her Bold Moves standards Setting aside those who are currently running this cycle. At this point 11 of them  already lost their primaries. To this point I can only find 10 candidates who've managed to get somewhere since 2023. Two lost their primaries, three lost the general and two were nonpartisan.

Despite that I need to be clear I think more highly of Her Bold Move then the Justice Democrats for five reasons:

1. They're living up to their mission statement and running candidates in places that are absolutely much harder for progressives to win, such as Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky even after four years. The Justice Democrats stopped doing that at least three election cycles ago.

2. They're trying to win at state and local offices as opposed to the deep blue districts that the Justice Democrats have focused on and keep losing at.  Considering that I believe in a 50 state strategy and local offices at every level I approve of that.

3. They are running more candidates at every level in each new cycle as opposed to the Justice Democrats running far less than their initial cycles.

4. They are willing to embrace non-partisans and independents in a way organizations like the Justice Democrats aren't.

5. Their mission statement is far simpler than most progressive organizations and therefore more likely to have success.

For that reason despite their relatively limited success to this point I applaud on every level what Her Bold Move is trying to do.  The problem comes in their execution.

Because over the last two years I've been on their mailing list and its very clear to me that they would consider me and anyone who isn't a female, whether cis, lesbian or trans, as someone they do not want as an ally. And that's because despite the nobility of their mission statement the online missives they send out on a nearly daily basis are so blatantly leaned towards the most left-wing identity politics agenda it makes the missives I used to receive from Daily Kos and other progressive websites seem like exercises in diplomacy by comparison.

I think by far the best way to illustrate that is to relate some of the ones I got in regard to Graham Platner in July. Over three days they sent three different emails arguing – justifiably in this case – about how horrible a choice Platner was. To be clear I didn't receive any emails from them in regard to Janet Mills during that period  but let's let that go. Instead on July 9^th they showed the six candidates. Mills was there and they brought up the names discussed:

The women on this list are literal current STATEWIDE OFFICEHOLDERS on the same list as a former Congressional STAFFER and the co-founder of a beer company.

Women are held to a vastly different standard. Men often require less experience and far fewer credentials to be taken serious as political candidates. They are framed as 'fresh voices', 'outsiders', 'fighters' or 'the kind of candidate who can win."

To be clear this a truth that's being held to every single candidate who runs as an outsider including some progressives. I mention this because Her Bold Move was an early endorser of Annie Andrews who also has no political experience but is being framed as a fresh voice, an outsider and a fighter by organizations like Her Bold Move. In fact these are terms that are more or less used for every candidate who is running for office these days whether they are male or female, any race or sexual orientations.

And none of this, for the record, even endorses Mills or Shenna Bellows, the two women in the race. Her Bold Move is basically choosing the biggest mess up the left has made – and they're using it to advertise for themselves. They're not even backing a candidate in Maine this cycle.

The bigger issue I had – and one that inspired this post – was one I received this week. It said, "Can we trust progressive men with women's issues?" The post was more or less a slam on Ruben Gallego.

Gallego was elected to the Senate from Arizona two years ago, taking the seat of Krysten Sinema who for most of her term had been attacked by the left as to moderate. She'd eventually shifted from Democrat to Independent before choosing not to run for reelection. Gallego was one of the few major victories for the Democrats in 2024.

However like most elected officials Gallego started moving to the center when he was elected. As Google states, he has adopted a tougher approach to border security, start to emphasize cost of living and economic stress, and has positioned himself by saying Democrats must adjust their platform on public safety and border enforcement to win competitive swing states.

So just as the left always does when a progressive decides to govern for the center where the votes are Her Bold Move chose to attack Gallego as not being trustworthy. Their arguments were specious at best, saying that Gallego was a protector of Eric Swalwell in Congress and that Gallego was sexist because he'd introduced the State of Men's Health Act in Congress. Even worse he did so alongside Roger Marshall of Kansas who is not only man but – gasp – a Republican.

To put it very mildly Gallego only narrowly won election in Arizona over Kari Lake – a woman but because she's a Republican I suppose she doesn't count . He outperformed Kamala Harris in Arizona by nearly 93, 500, many of whom I can only assume were men. So it's clear who the voters of Arizona wanted as their Senator and who they wanted as their President. This was clearly done to slam Gallego.

More to the point Her Bold Move didn't even use this as an opportunity to push for two of their own candidates who are running for the Arizona House of Representatives: Mariana Sandoval and Deborah Howard. For that matter they didn't use it to grant support Katie Hobbs, whose running for reelection as Governor in Arizona. The post was done solely to argue that Gallego – and by extension all male candidates who ran under the label of progressive – could not be trusted when it came to women's issues.

These posts, I need to be clear, were among the mildest of the ones I've received from Her Bold Move over the past years. Almost all of them spend more time attacking elected men in office – sometimes Republicans, though as you can see that's not a given – then they do lifting up female candidates on the major issues they talk about.

At best, this is the kind of reductive thinking I see among the progressive all the time to the point that if taken to its natural extension argues that female candidates are only supposed to run for office to help women in their states or districts. By extension if Kamala Harris had won the Presidency in 2024 Her Bold Move would have wanted her to devote her administration solely to helping women and/or people of color and if she tried to do anything to help anyone else, it would have justified primarying her in 2028.

At worst, the position of Her Bold Move plays entirely into all of the arguments that right-wing media, conservatives, Republican office-holders and of course You-Know-Who have been making about the Democrats catering to the radical left who don't have the interests of 'real Americans' and heart. The Democratic Party is notorious for its problems with white working class voters: Harris' receiving barely 32 percent of them was an all-time low and its been our party's Achilles Heel in the 21^st century, if not longer.  Her Bold Move plays into the right's narrative so perfectly that were it not for the fact that it does endorse candidates and has had quite a few wins, one would almost think it was a false flag for the Republican party.

Last month I wrote an article where I directly asked a question I've wondered about since at least 2024: do left-wing candidates actually want to win elected office? As I put it

A huge part of the reason I take the far left in American politics far less seriously then everybody in the media and both parties do is because the last decade has done much to convince me that to them the one issue that is the only one that counts to both parties – can they win? – is at the bottom of priorities for the overwhelming majority of left-wing voters…The left has always believed far more in principles as a litmus test for candidates then electability. There's a joke in there about because they've never managed to have any real political power, the principles are all they have.

Her Bold Move is not the worst example of this contradiction but it's by far the most frustrating. On the one hand they have a very clear and simple goal that is worthy and should be accomplished. But on the other, their approach for achieving  it in their email blasts makes it clear that they care far more for that litmus test and arguing in the angriest way possible, even if it ends up pushing opponents into the enemy camp and making it all the harder to realize their own goals. With friends like them, the Democrats don't need enemies – and we've already got quite a few.

But I do support women holding elected office and even if Her Bold Move views me as suspect I'm still going to help women get there. I'm going to vote for Hochul for reelection as well as whatever women are running for state legislative office. And I'm already working to try and help Mary Peltola win the Senate in Alaska. I honestly don't know if Her Bold Move will go that far. Not only is Peltola a Blue dog Democrats she's got a history of reaching across the aisle. In fact one of her first jobs in politics was running Lisa Murkowski's write-in Senate campaign in 2010 which helped her after she was primaried by a Tea Party opponent.

Peltola, you see, actually does  support women holding elected office, whether they're progressive or not. Meanwhile Her Bold Move isn't running any candidates in Alaska this cycle. Maybe they should have asked Peltola who probably could tell her where to find them – and more importantly, how to get them elected.

Homicide: Lies & Other Truths

 

Teleplay by Anya Epstein & David Simon ; story by Noel Behn

Directed by Nick Gomez

 

It's tempting to look at the fate of Michelle Forbes on Homicide as part of the show's continuing struggles with female regulars. By this point Isabella Hoffman and Melissa Leo had already been written out of the series under less then ideal conditions and the fact that Forbes was departed less then a season after Leo's could make the show look bad.

However its also clear that the bigger problem was that Juliana Cox essentially was facing the same issue that Megan Russert had the first season she was a regular and Brodie his entire tenure: the series is primarily based on the murder police and anyone who is secondary to it will be lacking. While it might have been noble to try and increase the prominence of the M.E's role on Homicide as we saw in the four seasons before Cox arrived that's never been that big a role to begin with. And as an unfortunate side effect by putting Cox at the center of every medical examination the writers had been forced to reduce the roles of the several recurring characters who had recurring roles. The most obvious example was Alyssa Dyer who only made one appearance on Homicide during Forbes's entire tenure. It's not a coincidence that once Forbes left the show Harlee McBride and Ralph Tabakin began to appear more frequently.

With that avenue cut off the only avenue left for Forbes was love interest and in truth that never worked particularly well either because as much chemistry as Forbes and Reed Diamond had their relationship was derivative of other police dramas. What's more it paled in comparison to the first season relationship between Bolander and Dr. Blythe way back in the first season. That storyline worked because of Beatty's gift at playing the melancholy surrounding Bolander as well as the fact that both actors were playing divorcees in their late forties, neither of whom were conventionally attractive. For all the darkness that surrounded so much of Cox and Kellerman's relationship it really seemed like Homicide was trying to boost its ratings with it rather than genuinely explore something.

One can hardly blame Forbes when it was announced the series was renewed for a seventh season she made it clear she didn't want to be around for it. Her exit still came as a huge shock to be when 'Lies & Other Truths' aired in March of 1998 mainly because I hadn't seen anything in the press about it. Part of the reason it bothered me was for an episode ostensibly about wrapping up Cox's arc, it appears to end in something of an anticlimax. While that's keeping with Homicide as a series overall, I do think its slightly unfair that so much of what is her final episode has so little to do with Juliana Cox.

The main story of the episode is part of an interesting pattern for the final half of the season: for the next four weeks the detectives will primarily be dealing with cases that don't involve names going up on the board. It's part of the larger theme of Season 6 as a whole: we spent much of the first third of the season dealing with the living victims of murder and now we're looking at how detectives deal with actions that don't involve murder in the definition of the term. So in that sense the fact that Cox's last major story is not about the usual metrics of her job is keeping with that pattern.

 

The episode opens with the crime in question: what would now be referred to as a case of road rage. A couple driving a car start honking a truck, the car passes it, and then the truck gets on the car's heels. This leads to the truck causing the car to crash into a semi that's parked nearby, killing the driver and leaving the passenger paralyzed while the truck's driver is killed too.

Munch and Kellerman are called into look at this because there seems to be a clear sign of intent from a passerby.  The case really isn't Homicide's purview and even if it is, as both detectives point out, it's only a paper clearance with killer and victim both dead. The issue is that the driver is a state maintenance road vehicle and there may be issues of liability. That is where Cox's involvement becomes critical.

Munch seems more interested in this as a murder because he's the primary and he can get an automatic clearance. Kellerman argues that the one witness is unreliable. By the time Munch and Kellerman get to the survivor –  the wife of the driver – she's hired her attorney. Despite being paralyzed from the neck down, She confirms the husband accidentally cut him off but that the driver seemed to be trying to run them off the road. The autopsy reveals that the driver of the state vehicle had a blood alcohol level of .09, just below the legal limit.

Later that day Cox's immediate superior comes to the morgue, ostensibly to say congratulations but then to tell her about the Dietz case. He tells her that they have some information that says the blood alcohol level should have been higher. It's pretty clear to us but not necessarily Cox that the state wants her to fudge the results. At first they just ask her to check the results again and Cox is willing. Only then does she learn that the attorney is planning to sue Maryland for compensatory damages on behalf of Dietz's wife. Then the boss comes back and basically tells her to change the numbers so that Dietz is drunk, therefore taking the state of the hook. Essentially Cox's job is dangled in front of her so that she has to be a team player. We can see on Forbes's face how much this turns her stomach.

The scene between Kellerman and Cox for lunch is sweet because it’s one of the few times this season we see the old Kellerman. He doesn't like seeing the city pressuring Cox into doing something that will take them off the hook for liability. Kellerman genuinely doesn't want to see the woman he cares for be forced to sell out her integrity. Cox is genuinely afraid of losing everything because of what the bosses make her do. Its Mike who tells her that the best thing to do is to go to the press. Juliana knows that she could end up losing her job. Its sad to see her tormented and you can tell that Mike genuinely wants her to do the right thing because he knows her.

Cox then visits the hospital and sees Mrs. Deitz suffering. She then goes to see Al and asks him for advice. She tells him everything she knows and asks for advice on who to talk too.  The story is leaked but the result is still the same: Cox is called to the director is kept waiting for a long time and is fired via a message by the secretary.

In what is perfect symmetry Cox recalls that on her first day on the job she fired a M.E. for falsifying a report in order to make a detective look good. Now she's being fired because she didn't do the same thing for her superior. It's a message that Simon will carry forth in The Wire; those who try to do the right thing are the ones who are punished for their actions if they cross the bosses. Kellerman is upset, blaming himself for what he did

 

 

The thing is there's an actual murder that takes place involving Bayliss and Pembleton and its actually more interesting. They've been called to Fort Haliburton where John Dean did prison for Watergate (Pembleton knows this) but he remembers it was also something to do with armed services. The officers received an anonymous phone call about a body that had been buried alive. The victim is Ashley Ashford Akton of Chattanooga and it's clear that he was in a coffin that was splintered to death but he was also their with a high tech cell phone and a water bottle and flashlight as well as an air tube to keep him alive. However the coffin collapsed "and the grave became real," as Pembleton puts it.

Unlike the case Munch and Kellerman have called to this is a murder: the coffin has been tampered with causing it to collapse. They have a witness who says that five men arrived in a truck and four of them buried the fifth.  The case then gives a chance for Kotto to shine as Al Giardello – and insight into his character.  Giardello tells then that the fort was once used for CIA operations at the start of the Cold War, one of the largest in the world.

This leads them into a world of wannabes and real-life spies. The wannabes include Akton. His widow tells them she received the call on the answering machine, saying where she was and that 'I've been betrayed!" Her husband's father and uncle received their military instruction at that fort and Ashley was obsessed with the history. His wife honestly seems more annoyed at his death then anything else: "He was as secretive as he was incompetent." Ballard finds out his cell phone was sold at the Silent Service Spy Store.

This leads them to Nelson Broyles played by familiar character actor Jon Glover. Glover at this point in his career was still very good at underplaying his roles and you can see the subtlety when he shows them a dynamite vest used in East Germany. Broyles recognizes the phone and says he knows the owner only by his code name: Johnny B. Goode and that he demanded top of the line material including the cell phone. He tells the detectives that he called 9-1-1 when he monitored the call and her Goode/Akton suffocating. He was anonymous because it was a breach of his customer's privacy.

After going through the CIC groups and coming up empty Giardello says he has 'a contact with inside information'. At this point we think we know Al well but there's something impressive about how after Al calls the phone and says "Sam. It's El Diago" then meets with a Russian who says, "El Diago they haven't hanged you yet." The way Pembleton and Bayliss are introduced to Sam Dunn. Bayliss and Pembleton get a whiskey and get a crash course in 'wannabe spies', the people who were drawn to the skills that were taught at Fort Halliburton because of the skills there. "They wish the Cold War had never ended," Dunn says. (No one could know in 1998 that it would resume but that the skills involved would be very much 21^st century.) He says that Akton along with his fellow acolytes will likely have a string of failed applications to CIA, NSA, FBI and even local law enforcement and that they will likely have known Acton from childhood. These applications will be 20 years old so it says something that not only can Sam get the information but he does so after Al just asks.

They cross reference his graduating class as well as very law enforcement applications from 1972-1975 this leads them to three of his classmates and one of them is none other then Nelson Broyles. Bayliss then decides to try and lure them in. They still have the cell phone in evidence control and he decides to use it to make a bogus call to Danvers and talk about the imminent arrest of these four actors. Broyles is monitoring it and he'll panic and phone the other three spies. Bayliss is right about this part but wrong about what Broyles panic will cause him to do. "By spreading disinformation?" Frank asks. "It's a classic Cold War technique," Bayliss says.

The technique works – sort of. They find his three compatriots who call themselves the 'sons of the Silent Service'. Ash was on a training mission which involved burying him alive like the East Germans in the 1950s but then something went wrong. Someone switched the caskets and Nelson Broyles insisted they all leave. This is a very funny scene as we see a bunch of balding fortyish men who really do look like CPA's arguing "Do we have to tell you all are secrets?" and then getting upset when they're all arrested.

The episode's climax comes when Broyles comes into the squad room with the dynamite vest we saw strapped to his chest, his thumbs on the trigger. There's a perfect mix of comedy and horror in the scene as Broyles insists his innocence and is shocked that the other members have 'betrayed the cause'  He makes an impassioned plea for the Cold War and its operatives and argues "Better dead then a captive!" Bayliss and Pembleton make it clear that they just want to interview him: "Surely you can resist simple law enforcement techniques." They appeal to his sense of pride and they get Bayliss to cutoff the switch to the bomb.

"My mind has been trained to resist the most powerful brainwashing techniques known to man," Broyles says proudly. Cut to him in the box probably a minute later. "I confess," he says over and over. Akton was killed because he was a dilletante and a drunk who revealed his secrets to outsiders. He claims we are still at war "a war against our own complacency." (Considering what would happen just a few years later, these remarks seem incredibly prescient.) Yet despite Akton breaking the rules not even Broyles can explain why he called 9-1-1. Bayliss makes it clear that at the end of the day Broyles couldn't practice what he preached anymore than Akton could. Broyles is practically in tears as he signs his confession.

The scene that unfolds in the Waterfront with the detectives talking with Sam and Gee. Bayliss casually asks if there was anyone he couldn't break. Sam says: "There was only one man. His determination was inhuman…Al Giardello." When Bayliss asks if Giardello was a prisoner of war Al remains stone-faced. "I'd prefer not to talk about it." But Sam does. He was KGB in Hanoi and he tried his best for four months and not only did he fail, Al convinced him to defect. Asked how he did all Al says is: "Me and $300,000."

The show also wraps up Falsone's custody case which goes pretty much as the viewer and even Falsone expected. What's fascinating is that the custody hearing has gone on so long that even Falsone doubts whether his reasons for suing in the first place were the right ones. Its striking to see a character we've seen so certain professionally and personally actively expressing doubt for the first time and Seda does much to further humanize his character. After the arguments are done Paul and Janine are waiting and Falsone acknowledges what he sees on the street: "the mothers sometimes show up, but the father is never in sight." He talks about his father, who was an alcoholic (Janine tells him that) but says his father was there for him. "If today I'm a cop instead of a criminal HE gets all the credit."  And then he tells Janine that he just wants the best thing for his kid. "And if him staying with you is the best thing for that to happen, that's okay too." The custody arrangement remains the same but Janine decides to give him more opportunities to see his son regardless of the ruling.  

The final scene between Kellerman and Cox is beautiful. She tells Mike that she wants to smell something in the air that isn't formaldehyde. Over the TV they see the state has settled with Dietz for $45 million. Kellerman tells Cox: "You did good."  Asked if she leaves town what happens to us Cox says: "Much to my dismay there never was an us."  She kisses him goodbye and says, "Stay out of trouble, Okay?" She has no idea how much trouble Mike's about to get in.

In a scene of perfect symmetry Juliana Cox leaves the show the same way she came in: driving fast out of town with the same song playing as before. Regardless of how you feel about her character Simon and Epstein gave her a perfectly symmetrical exit.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Mahoney PTSD: Kellerman asks Cox out for lunch at the Waterfront and Cox reminds him just how badly he got drunk the last time she saw him there. He tells her that Meldrick got suspended and Georgia Rae was suing him. "I think I'm okay now," he assures her. You just can't stop lying can you Mike?

'Detective Munch': Munch is behind the bar at the Waterfront in Cox and Kellerman's final encounter. The fun part is that usually clued in John serves the two of them drinks, watches the report and sees Juliana leave utterly unaware of what has happened. "Where'd Juliana go? The night is young." "She had to leave," Mike says. Munch has no idea he'll never see her again.

Hey, Isn't That… One of the most gifted character actors of all time, John Glover was nominated for five Emmys all between 1986 and 1994. Twice for Best Supporting Actor in a miniseries or a special for An Early Frost and Nutcracker, Money, Madness and Murder, twice for Best Guest Actor in a Drama, for playing Paul Kohler, a doctor who suffered from Elephant's Man disease on L.A. Law and Dennis Atwood on Crime and Punishment, a very short live series by Dick Wolf and playing Ned Miller on the first season of Frasier. For the purpose of this article I'm only going to focus on his TV work and that's more than enough since this episode.

Following this appearance he would play the Devil himself in the short-lived cult series Brimstone. His most famous role to most viewers was playing Lionel Luthor on Smallville, a role he played as a regular for the first seven seasons of the show. He's had roles as Declan Gage on Law and Order Criminal Intent, Simon Craft on Numbers, Samson Gray on Heroes and Jared Andrews across four seasons of The Good Wife, He played Teddy Maddox on Fear the Walking Dead and Eliot on And Just Like That…

He also has a substantial career as a voice actor, most famously for playing the Riddler on Batman: The Animated Series as well as other DC related shows in the 1990s. He also did the voice work for Abraxas in Tron: Uprising and Rodey in Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.

Needless to say he's had a substantial film career particularly in the 1980s and 1990s usually as heavies. Such favorite work includes Brother Leon in The Chocolate War, Brice Cummings in Scrooged and Daniel Clamp in Gremlins 2. He also recreated his dual role of John and James Jeckyl in the film version of Love! Valour! Compassion! In 1997 . His last film role of significance was Mr. Sivana in Shazam!

Constant Reader September 2026 The Works of Elle Kennedy

 

For much of the last fifteen years one of my pleasures – not guilty, only rarely shared here – have been romance novels. I've rarely shared those particular books at this site, though every so often I've been reviewing a few of the authors who work in the field.

I have no boundaries with this genre: YA, simply romantic, pretty erotic, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, heterosexual, LGBTQ+, even the occasional walk on the wild side into polyamorous ones. I have a couple of qualifiers found after years of trial and error: the biggest one being that they have to be contemporary romances. I've never been able to get into the 'romantasy' genre but that's more because I have issues with the 'fantasy' part of it. That's the major reason I never became a fan of Starz's Outlander franchise – I read the first volume of Diana Galbadon's work but could never get into any of the others. It's the same reason I've never been able to get into Game Of Thrones or Vikings; it's just not my cup of tea but I don't judge the ones who are devoted to it.

What I've found surprising is given how streaming services and films have been lapping up every form of IP imaginable I've yet to see, say, any series or movies devoted to the works of Christina Lauren or Lynn Painter, both of whom have a huge readership and following. I have no doubt much of it has to do with it being viewed as a female-only genre which is a clear sign of institutional sexism in our society, yada, yada, yada, I just which they'd get over it. And it does seem in the last couple of years the world of streaming is.

Now though I cast a wide net for romance reading as with every other major book I am aware of what I like and don't like. Which is why I will eventually see People We Meet on Vacation but have no desire to see The Love Hypothesis. I've read my share of Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood and I much prefer the former.

The main reason I've written nothing about the cultural phenomenon so big there are people up in arms that it didn't get nominated for Emmys this year: Heated Rivalry. And that's because I have to make a confession: until the series was greenlit I'd never heard of Rachel Reid's romance novels between gay hockey players. To be clear I was well aware of hockey romances and even gay hockey romances. But that's because over the last several years I've been reading the books of one of the most enjoyable writers in the entire genre: Elle Kennedy.

Because of my eclectic nature I didn't find out about Elle Kennedy until about four years ago when I read the first book in her Avalon Bay series Good Girl Complex. The majority of Kennedy's novels are set among woman who are in their twenties and either in college or on the verge of graduating. Like so many romance novelists she splits her narratives between the male and female perspective.  (Lauren and Painter, who I mentioned above, are two writers who follow this pattern but it's common to many writers in the genre.) I ended up finding Kennedy's first hockey romances when I was reading the 'Briar U' series which is by far her biggest franchise. And in my way of doing things I then ended up with the wellspring Off Campus.

For those of you who've not encountered them like so many of Kennedy's works the Off Campus series takes place in Briar University, a fictional Ivy League School in Massachusetts. Briar is part of the most dominant college hockey teams in the entire country and anyone whose part of the Briar Hockey Team is automatically the alphas on the campus. Every female college students wants to sleep with the hockey team – and the hockey teams is more than fine with it – and most of the male college students want to be the briar hockey team – and to be clear some of them want to sleep with the hockey team – which more than a few are open too.

The Off Campus series centers on four students who have been rooming together since freshman year and have become essentially brothers in every way. Garrett Graham, John Logan, Dean DiLaurentis and John Tucker. (To clear things up right away even Logan and Tucker refer to themselves by their last names and only use 'John' when they are angry at each other.) The series begins in their junior year while the new hockey season is underway.

What might strike many readers – and perhaps be refreshing to the average viewer – is the players and almost everyone on campus is only interested in the day-to-day details of their lives rather than outside factors. Everybody goes to class, they go to sorority parties, they go to pep rallies, after parties, they worry about their grades and their future out of college. To be very clear these books all acknowledge that they do take place during Trump's first term but none of them – male, female, or whatever – are terrified of the world outside. They're more concerned with what will happen each season, passing tests and what their future might look like post college.

And just to be clear nobody – not even the alphas on the Briar hockey team – is living a charmed life. Garrett Graham is wealthy because of his family name, but his father – a pro-hockey legend – is an abusive drunk who drove Garrett's mother away and is clearly doing the same to his second wife. Logan's dealing with a drunk father and comes from a very working class home and he thinks that once he leaves Briar his life is over because he's going to have to take care of him for the rest of his life. Tucker comes from a single mom family in a working class town in Dallas. Dean comes from wealth and privilege and is very happy about his life and he seems incredibly shallow. Naturally when we reach his novel we learn theirs more to him than meets the eye.

None of them are looking for love and long-term relationships – this is college after all. Hookups happen easier to them then most but it's also common for just about everyone else in Briar. Kennedy is wonderful because she makes it very clear in all of her books relating to Briar that the women are just as capable of wanting to get laid as men are and frequently aren't looking for relationships either.

To give the best example there is Sabrina James. If there was such a thing as an alpha female Sabrina would be that. The first time we meet her at a frat party she goes right to the Briar quarterback (football is important in Briar but the team isn't as good as the hockey team) and begins to make out with him. Dean is sitting across from her and the first thing she does is fix Dean with a look and say "Richie."

After Dean acknowledges her presence:

"I noticed you actually bothered showing up for class this morning" Sabrina smirks. "You realize the TA is a dude, huh? You poor thing. Can't fuck your way into a passing grade."

"Blow me, Sabrina."

(Sabrina) cocks a brow. "Yeah? Pull it out, big boy."

It should be mentioned that by this point its established Dean is basically the best looking man perhaps on campus and he just to look at a girl and they'll fall at his feet. By this point quite a few of the woman who've been narrating novels are non-plussed by Dean but Sabrina's the first one who seems to hate him. Not that she cares that much; within a minute she pulls her target away and they're clearly about to hook up as loudly and noisily as possible.

Most of the woman Kennedy has tell their side of the story are not as alpha as Sabrina but they are very sure of themselves in life and in a sense sexually. By far my favorite character of the Off-Campus series is Allie Hayes who we meet in the first novel. Annie is described as utterly confident in her sexuality, can be very focused and loud in her sex with her boyfriend and has a lot of energy.

One of my favorite lines in the entire series comes in The Score, which is the story of Allie and Dean. This is the enemies to lovers romance trope as Allie thinks Dean is a 'man-whore (which Dean will later sees proud of) After Allie breaks up with her boyfriend and Hannah is out of town, she orders Dean to look after Allie to prevent her from getting back together with her ex.

Naturally they end up hooking up (Allie initiates the encounter, for the record) and in the aftermath Dean is frankly put off why Allie doesn't want to have a repeat performance. So after he texts her and says what he wants to sleep with her again, Allie's response is simple. "Well, of course he does. I'm amazing in bed."

Allie's problem is that she doesn't like having one-night stands: she likes relationships. However she admits she remembers just how great the sex was and then proceeds to realize that she has to work this out logically. She wants to have sex with Dean again and he wants to sleep with her. So she comes up with the next proof:

Premise I: Casual sex makes me uncomfortable

Premise II: I just got out of a long-term relationship and am not ready for another one.

Premise III: Even if I was, I wouldn't want a relationship with man-whore Dean.

Conclusion: Um…?

I mean, you got give credit to any woman who decides to have casual sex with someone because she aced Argumentative Logic.

And Kennedy because she makes it clear that no one is an idiot in her books later proves that despite their efforts they haven't fooled anybody. In the concluding novel The Goal, which tells Tucker's story, makes it clear he can follow the clues:

Allie Hayes, the best friend of our other roommate's girlfriend, crashed at our place last night.

Dean is a man-whore.

Chicks love Dean.

Ally is a chick.

Ergo, Dean slept with Allie.

Followed by:

Plus, there were the clothes scattered around the living room because Dean is physically incapable of having sex in his bedroom.

That's another mystery that baffles everybody who knows Dean and of course Allie finds about it. To be clear she also remembers because she tells Dean "I want to christen it" and Dean has had sex there before, of course. Many, many times.

Even as a critic there are some things you turn to as comfort food not necessarily because they're the best things ever but because they bring you happiness when you need them such as Law & Order reruns or simply watching a few minutes of Big Little Lies every time I feel like it. When I need to unwind a little during the day I'll look at a romance novel much like Elle Kennedy. And this is, to be clear, coming from a cis white male. I can only imagine how many women have turned to it over the years.

Which is why I was happy to learn last year that Amazon was doing a streaming version of Off Campus and happier still when it was renewed for a second season even before the first season debuted last May. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't hanging on to see who was cast to play Garrett and Hannah in the first season (The Deal, the first novel in the series deals with their love story) but there was a period when I could understand why so many people might care when the next MCU trailer or the preview for House of Dragon came out.

Nor was I shocked to learn that the first season has become one of the most streamed series in Amazon's history and that practically overnight the cast of complete unknowns from Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli have become the kind of overnight sensation the same way the cast of Heated Rivalry did.  These characters mean something they people. Hell they mean something to me.

We turn to books like these in a complicated, messy world because they are formulaic but there's always room for variation in the formula and you still care about the characters anyway. This has been true of almost every romance novel I've read and it's definitely true for Off-Campus.  There are just small foibles and quirks that I truly love that you don't find in any other genre. I love the recurring gag, for example, how Logan keeps trying to come up with texting acronyms that make no sense to anyone but him when he says them but because Garrett knows his friend so well he can translate them without much effort. I love the bond that forms among the girlfriends of the Briar team that eventually becomes deeper that being in the same place and becomes a sisterhood itself overtime. (And if you've read your share of Kennedy you know these bonds last way beyond graduation.) And because I'm a fan of shared universe stories as a whole I always love how side characters you meet in a novel in one book will end up getting their own story three or four books later and the constant callback to earlier novels.

Now that my rush for the Emmys is over I plan to finally start watching Off Campus this week and perhaps even reviewing it for my blog at some point. Perhaps I'll go in depth the way for other series and literary adaptations, maybe I'll just enjoy the ride. And I do look forward to meeting who they eventually get to play just later characters as Sabrina and Grace and if they go a little later Hunter Davenport and Summer, Dean's sister whose even more attractive then he is and instantly gets a crush on one of the introverts on the team. I'm not going to be one of those nitpickers about how they're getting small details different because I don't care that much and I'm not that kind of person.

Oh and just in case there are some people who don't know: Elle Kennedy has written her share of gay hockey love stories. Most of them are done in collaboration with Sabrina Bowen, who like Kennedy has her own series of hockey romances that span the entire sexual spectrum. And if that's a little too much Lynn Painter's most recent YA novel is called Fake Skating and tells the story of two childhood friends who reconnect when she moves to Minnesota and finds her childhood friend is now the local town's hockey god.

I'm just putting that out there because some people might say those stories deserve TV series too. You know, some people.

With Season 43 of Jeopardy Underway We Can Now Officially Update The Roster for the 2027 Tournament of Champions

 

 

Those of you who read my columns know that when the 2026 Jeopardy Masters concluded I promised to be back this weekend with an update for Season 43 before it began Monday. And I was genuinely planning to do so – until I remembered my own history.

Ever since I began regularly covering Jeopardy in my writing intentionally or not, a pattern has been developing. In the post-Trebek era I don't start writing about each new season of Jeopardy until something of importance happens. (Or in the case of Season 40 when nothing of importance seemed to be happening.)

What was important? Basically someone qualifying for the next Tournament of Champions. Sometimes you had to wait for their run to end (as we did with Matt Amodio way back in the fall of 2021) Sometimes you needed to wait for someone to qualify at all and that could take a bit. But I figured I would be best served by waiting at least until the first week of the season was over.

With good reason. At the end of Season 42 Matthew Riggle, a community college professor from Madison, Alabama had won the last two games and $64,400. So if he could just make it until Wednesday then he would officially qualify for the 2027 Tournament of Champions.

Which he has managed to do, though he really made it look hard. In the season premiere he spent the entire game trailing Bryan Lee and when he wagered everything on a Daily Double in Double Jeopardy and lost it all, I thought it would end right there. But he managed an impressive recovery and on a tough Final Jeopardy no one got right, he left himself with enough money to win his third straight game. On Tuesday he was challenged seriously by Wesley Jalipa and Abby Mullen but maintained his lead throughout the game and ended up winning his fourth game.

So yesterday with $95,602 he just needed one more win to officially get to the Tournament of Champions. Unfortunately he proved to be his own worst enemy – though to be fair even if he hadn't he almost certainly would have still lost.

Matthew led throughout the Jeopardy round more due to the failures of his opponents Daniel Nicastro and Jen Spinoglio. Both of them were in the red for much of it and while they recovered Matthew finished it in the lead with $4800 to Jen's $2600 and Daniel's $400.

His odds improved as Dan got the first Daily Double in Double Jeopardy wrong. Matthew moved up to $9600 when he found the other Daily Double in UNFINISHED LIT. He wagered $7000:

Published posthumously in 1938, her 'The Buccaneers' wasn't about pirates but about love in the Gilded Age.

There was a long pause. Before time ran out he guessed: "Who is…Stein?" He didn't know what I did it home: it was Edith Wharton. He dropped to $2600.

After that Jen who'd been pretty quiet during this round went on a run of her own. She finished the round with 20 correct responses and only four incorrect ones and was helped by not finding a Daily Double to end with $10,600. Matthew had to struggle to stop her from running away with it and Dan, who at one point was at -$1900 had to fight to finish in positive. Both achieved their goals: Matthew finished with $5400 while Daniel got the last clue of the game correct to end with $100.

But it was irrelevant because of how Final Jeopardy went. The category was NAMES IN TECH NEWS:

This last name in A.I. news has the same origin as a Latin name meaning 'lover of God' or 'loved by God.'

Now I had no idea what they were talking about with this clue. Daniel wrote down: "What is Theodore?" That was wrong and he lost $98.

Matthew was next. He wrote down: "What is Amadeus?" Right idea but the wrong name. It cost him $5201, leaving him with $199.

Jen was in pretty good shape and she knew the correct last name. In fact she wrote it down almost immediately. "What is Amodei?" That was correct. The founders of Anthropic are Dario and Daniela Amodei. She added $201 to become the new champion with $10,801.

But despite that Matthew is now officially listed as the eleventh player qualified for the 2027 Tournament of Champions. So now is as good a time as any to remind of you of the lineup we have coming back for the 2027 Tournament of Champions:

Harrison Whitaker, 14 wins, $373,999

Will Riley, 4 wins, $77,403

James Denison, 4 wins, $99,400

Jamie Ding, 31 wins, $882,605

Tristan Williams, 10 wins, $221,902

Chris  D'Angelo, 8 wins, $194,201

Peter McFerrin, 6 wins, $147,399

Adam Remsen, 12 wins, $306, 415

Caleb Groen, 12 wins, $346, 698

Mina Kimes, Celebrity Jeopardy All-Stars Winner

Matthew Riggle, 4 wins, $95,602.

 

I mentioned in my wrap-up of Season 42 that there were three three-game winners who, if past was prologue, would be invited automatically to the Tournament of Champions. However, discretion being the better part of valor, I'm going to wait until the eligibility requirements for the 2025-2026 come to an end in November before I officially put them on the roster. A lot can change in two months.

Besides it's already a formidable lineup with five super-champions, one of whom is already a cultural phenomenon. Jamie Ding, now the fifth best player in Jeopardy history in terms of games and money one, has become a cultural sensation, appearing on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire with Ben Affleck this summer, among other places. However there are no guarantees in Jeopardy as Scott Riccardi ended up learning when he made it to the Finals this past February.

Will someone the level of Paolo Pasco emerged in the next two months? Will another super-champion rise during that period? Anything can happen and your humble scribe will be there.

And once again congratulations to Jeopardy for winning the Emmy for Best Game Show this year. Well-deserved.