This is Jeopardy - Failures of the Superchampions, Part 3: Matt Jackson Reinvents Jeopardy - And is Humbled in The TOC By A No-Less Super-Champion

 

 

Whatever thoughts viewers like myself might have had that the arrival of Arthur Chu and Julia Collins so close to each other in 2014 might lead to a new wave of Jeopardy super-champions were quickly diminished for all of the 2014-2015 season. Indeed from Collins’ departure the previous May until the 2014 Tournament of Champions there was only one Jeopardy champion at all Catherine Hardee who won four games and $95,201.

In the aftermath of the Tournament Jeopardy basically did what Jeopardy has done since the beginning of its run and that had fundamentally was unchanged even after the five day limit was removed: produce several excellent players who won four or five games. To be sure there was a period that April when it did seem to be producing players who were capable of more in very rapid succession. Indeed during that month three different players won more than six games; the first time in the show’s history that had happened.

Kerry Greene won six games and $146,598 from April 1^st to April 9^th. The day after she was beaten Alex Jacob won six games and $149,802 before he lost to Todd Lovell. (We’ll be dealing with both of those players later on.) And less than three days after Alex lost Greg Seroka won seven games and $180,401.

All of these players and indeed the entire list of winners during this season were of the level of very, very good, more or less at the continued excellence that Jeopardy viewers like myself were more than used to by this point. The majority were all winning at least $100,000 or more during their runs, which in the era where the dollar figures are doubled is as much a benchmark of excellence on Jeopardy as it comes to games won. Some were clearly impressive even in a more limited scope. Kerry Greene’s first victory came over Michael Bilow who in a mere three games had won $96,000. He played well in his fourth appearance before things went wrong for him on both Daily Doubles he found in Double Jeopardy and he was in the red at the end of the round. That total would turn out to be enough to get into the Tournament of Champions later that year the first three game winner to qualify for the Tournament of Champions since 2007. (Two actually qualified that year Nick Swezey and Doug Hicton, with the latter finishing second to Celeste DiNucci in the finals.)

This was, again, Jeopardy as I knew it and when the season came to an end with no one coming close to winning ten games I recall no sense of disappointment. Maybe Jeopardy would produce another super-champion someday but it most likely wouldn’t be any time soon. And I continued to believe that when the 2015-2016 season started.

Then two weeks  in everything changed again and this time in a way that not even Julia Collins could have prepared me for.

Matt Jackson first appeared as a challenger to Dylan Parson, who’d won the previous three games and just under $30,000. He played well his first appearance, ran away with the game by Double Jeopardy and won $21,200. Impressive but hardly remarkable.

By the end of the Jeopardy round of his second appearance he already had $10,000 and finished the round with another runaway and $35,000 to his credit. He didn’t get Final Jeopardy right but neither did anyone. By the end of the following week Alex was starting to get familiar with his patterns to the point that when he found the Daily Double in the Jeopardy round he actually joked with him:

Alex: “I have bad news for you Matt. Usually when you hit a Daily Double you risk $6000. Now you have only $5000. How are you gonna handle this crisis?”

Among laughter Matt said $4000. He got it right. Little surprise he had yet to get a Daily Double wrong to this point. By the end of the day he had won his sixth game and was at $166,401. More importantly it was his sixth consecutive runaway victory. The following day he got a Daily Double incorrect for the first time. It changed nothing and he won his seventh consecutive runaway. When he won his eighth state runaway victory the following day and an additional $40,009 Alex said: “Is it too soon to mention the name Ken Jennings?”

It might not have been. Matt was averaging just under $30,000 a game by that point and what I had forgotten was that Ken had not runaway with his first game or indeed his third. That streak ended the following day but he won yet again with his smallest total of $18,801. In just 9 games he was under a $250,000. Making up for those disappointments he won $40,000 the following day and $50,000 the next.

Alex noted Matt was now tied for fourth place in number of games won that day with 11 but he also had won $339,411 fourth place in money won all time. Only Ken Jennings himself had won more money in that few games.

But it wasn’t just how dominant Matt was that made him standout: it was how expressive he was as he played. He wasn’t arrogant as some players such as Arthur Chu had been accused of; rather the term was enthusiastic. He had energy and personality in a way that Ken himself had seemed to be lacking at times in his original run (when he came back for later tournaments he’d clearly learned to enjoy himself more) Matt seemed as happy to be there as he was to keep winning.

Which he did for the next two games. By that point he had won 13 games, 12 of them in runaways and a grand total of $411,612. One more win would most likely put him ahead of Julia Collins and David Madden in terms of money won.

But on October 14^th as it must come to all Jeopardy champions Matt met his match in Michael Baker. Michael was the first player Matt had encountered who was at his level and the two spent the entire game going back and forth for the lead. There were also quite a lot of clues that didn’t get picked in Double Jeopardy. Matt moved ahead on the last correct response before the end of round buzzer rang to go ahead with $17,800 to Michael’s $17,600. Usually being ahead had worked in Matt’s favor. On this day it would not.

The Final Jeopardy category was U.S. LANDMARKS. “For its 50^th anniversary in 2012, the roof of this landmark was temporarily repainted its original color, Galaxy Gold.”

Sally Hatfield, who was in third wrote down: “What is Cape Canaveral?” It was incorrect. She lost everything. Michael’s response was revealed next: “What is Dodger Stadium?” He wagered $2399, leaving him with $15,201.

It came down to Matt. He wrote down: “What is the Kennedy Center?” It was in fact the Space Needle in Seattle. It came down to Matt’s wager – and he bet $17,401. Michael Baker as Alex said was a giant killer. And as Alex said they would see Matt in our Tournament of Champions.

There’s an argument that Matt Jackson was the most dominant player in Jeopardy history between the reign of Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer (though their would be one more player who would clearly be at his level, if not better) Jennings himself seemed to recognize the kindred spirit. Four years later at the Jeopardy All-Stars Ken Jennings was a team captain and had a chance to make his first draft pick  he chose Matt Jackson.

Indeed Matt did every Ken did: average 28 to 30 correct responses a game, never (well, hardly ever) give an incorrect response, find the Daily Doubles and respond correctly on them. And there was no question he was playing at a level that not even David Madden or Julia Collins had, considering that in thirteen games he’d won $150,000 more than Julia had in that span and over $105,000 more than David had.

When the Tournament of Champions started a little less than a month after Matt was defeated I was not as certain that Matt would prevail as I had been that either Julia or Arthur would the previous November. I did think he had a better chance for one reason. There’d been less than a month between his original appearance and the start of the tournament which meant that there was less time for rust to settle. There was also the fact that the competition, while generally very good, did not seem to have a competitor at the level of Matt.

This brings me to Alex Jacob. At the time of his original appearance in April of 2015 Alex was a currency trader from Chicago. I could make a joke about how he had a lot of currency after his original appearance to trade – except Alex seemed more than willing to trade his imaginary currency away as if it were meaningless.

On a superficial level Alex Jacob’s run doesn’t seem that impressive: he ‘only’ won six games and won a ‘meager’ $149,802. That’s basically the same total Kerry Greene, whose run ended the day before Alex’s began, won in her six games (she won $146,598). But Alex was just as impressive as Roger Craig when it came to playing Jeopardy and there’s an argument that James Holzhauer may have modeled his betting strategy on Alex as much as Roger.

Indeed when Alex found a Daily Double he just as frequently said: “All in.” He even had a similar gesture, waving his hand in front of him. But there was a clear difference between the gambler and the currency trader: Alex was humble and quiet as he did so and never seemed to be showing off. He had a better poker face than James did and a much quieter approach. No one was going to call Alex Jacob a game show villain; indeed he very quickly became one of the more beloved players in the show’s history. By the time he’d just won five games his opponents knew how good he was. Todd Lovell, who unseated him after six games knew how fortunate he’d been to beat him.

In Matt’s quarterfinal appearance against 5-day winner John Schultz and Teachers Tournament Winner Jennifer Giles Matt managed to win his semi-final game – but not easily. John was close to him throughout the Jeopardy round and kept right up him throughout Double Jeopardy. And while Matt prevailed no one gave a correct response for Final Jeopardy and he wagered the least. Indeed the only player who managed a runaway victory in the quarterfinals was none other than Alex Jacob.

In his semi-final Alex once again ran away with his victory. He lead almost from start to finish in both his games but was cautious in wagering on Daily Doubles in a way he hadn’t been in his original run. One could have thought he was being more conservative in his wagering. We learned very quickly in the finals that would not be the case.

In his semi-final game Matt was actually trailing at the end of the Jeopardy round, albeit only $400 to Catherine Hardee. Then in Double Jeopardy he started to roll. He had $12,400 when he found the other Daily Double in SHOW TUNES. He wagered $8000:

“Act I of Wicked ends with this high-flying song.” When Matt answered: “What is ‘Defying Gravity?” and when he responded correctly he pounded his hands together and pumped his fist in the air in joy. He managed to runaway with the game by the end of Double Jeopardy, with $28,400 to Andrew Haringer’s $10,400 and Catherine’s $6400. He also managed to do what Alex was unable to do in his match: get Final Jeopardy correct:

The category was SPACE EXPLORATION: “The first man to travel into space began his journey on that fateful day in what is today this country.” Matt knew the correct country: “What is Kazakhstan?”

Matt faced off against Alex Jacob and Kerry Greene. In theory this should have been an exciting and close match between two of the best game. In practice Alex Jacob was in complete control almost from the start of Game 1. He had $5000 before he found the Daily Double in the Jeopardy round, bet everything and at the end of the round had $12,400 to Matt’s $4000. Kerry was at -$200. Then in Double Jeopardy Alex got to the first Daily Double five clues in to the round in NORTH & SOUTH AMERICA. At the time he had $15,200.

When he said, “Let’s bet it all” there were audible murmurs and gasps in the audience. With good reason: this kind of thing simply was done in Tournaments of Champions. And when players did doit  in special tournaments it almost always backfired.

“Louie’s Backyard is a party spot in this Texas spring break destination.” Alex barely took a breath: “What is South Padre Island?” The round barely started and he had $30,400.

Matt and Kerry spent the remainder of Double Jeopardy trying to close the gap. Alex helped slightly by getting two expensive clues wrong that lost him $3600 and Matt managed to get to the other Daily Double before he could in THE TUTORS.

With only $5200 to risk and in a position he’d never been in before Matt bet $5000:

“Around 343 B.C he was summoned by Philip II to be tutor to his son.” Matt knew it was Aristotle and upped his score to $10,200.” By the end of Double Jeopardy Matt was still in the lead with $29,600 to Matt’s $14,600 and Kerry’s $8200.

Once again they were faced with an excruciatingly difficult Final Jeopardy. The category was FRENCH NOVEL TITLE HEROES. The clue was even tougher the category sounded: “He ‘looked as if he had been shut up for a long time in a tomb and…been unable to recover the…complexion of the living.” Both Kerry and Matt wrote down: “What is The Man in the Iron Mask?” That was the right author but the wrong novel. It was The Count of Monte Cristo.

Kerry lost $4800. Matt, who had little choice wagered and lost $11,600. Alex was humble in victory. He wrote down: “Who is good game guys?” and after the scores were revealed said chivalrously: “Let’s do it again, tomorrow.” He was gracious: he now had $29,600 to Kerry’s $3400 and Matt’s $3000. To defeat him was going to take a lot of work by either Matt or Kerry.

Neither Matt nor Kerry gave in to their credit. Alex managed to take the lead early yet again in the Jeopardy round and while he held it, it was smaller than the previous day. He finished with $8600 to Matt’s $5600 and Kerry’s $3200.

Alex didn’t intend to make it that easy for his competitors. Again he found the first Daily Double in Double Jeopardy and he had $11,800 this time. But, in keeping with a pattern that he had sometimes done in his original run, he only wagered $100 in HOW THE EAST WAS WON:

“Russian caravans got access to Beijing in a 1689 treaty with this dynasty that gave its name to a region.” It took him until the end of time to come up with: “What is Manchu?”

Three clues later Matt found the other Daily Double in THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH. At the time Matt had $10,000. Alex Trebek said: “You’re bright enough to do the math.” And Matt knew it: “Sorry Mom, I’m betting it all.”

“Overseeing the FDA is one job of this Cabinet Department.”

Matt paused: “What is the United States Department of Agriculture?”

Alex Trebek gently said: “No what is Health and Human Services?” Sorry, Mom. Sorry.

Matt had nothing to apologize for. He had no choice in what he had to do. The rest of the round was fundamentally an exercise. After Alex Jacob basically ran the category MOVIE LINES, MADE TV SAFE it was for all intents and purposes over. To beat Alex Jacob you had to be practically perfect and in Game 2 of the Final Alex had been perfect, giving 23 correct responses and not making a single mistake.

Alex Trebek said before Final Jeopardy was over told Alex that this was the most dominant performance by anyone in any of our tournaments. I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate – as I mentioned in my first article in this series Roger Craig had performed as well as Alex if not better when it came to scoring – but I know that Matt and Kerry wouldn’t have disputed that statement.

Final Jeopardy  for Game was an exercise and it was, if anything, tougher then the one in Game 1. The category was PHILOSOPHERS: “His last name means a type of burial place and in 1855 that’s where he went.” Kerry incredibly knew the correct response: “Who is Kirkegaard?” In Danish, that name refers to churchyard or graveyard.”

If the viewer wasn’t already an Alex Jacob fan by this point his Final Jeopardy response would have done the job. He wrote down: Thanks to everyone who works on the world’s greatest gameshow!!” He risked nothing of course. As Alex Trebek congratulated him Alex Jacob was clearly choked up and near tears as he accepted his due. In a later interview he said simply: “I just love this game so much.” And few players had done more credit to it.

While there is supposedly no silver medal for finishing second, Matt Jackson’s second place finish did have significance. By winning $100,000 his total combined Jeopardy winnings were $511, 612, moving him ahead of Julia Collins and David Madden in total money winning and trailing only the big three at the time – Brad Rutter, Ken Jennings and Roger Craig.

Matt’s run, in hindsight, officially began the era of the super-champion. In every season that has followed (at least until today) there has been at least one player who has won 12 games or more. And just as often their runs would come up short in the Tournament of Champions the following year. Such would end up being the case – though in the next article there would be a longer gap for the next Tournament of Champions altogether.

In the next article I will deal with the runs of two champions who each won a dozen games and why it took such a long time for them to participate in a Tournament of Champions.

Original Sin Is Everything I Expected From A Dexter Prequel -And It Might Be More

 

 

I don’t  give extra credit in my reviews but if nothing else Original Sin would earn at least an extra half a star for being, three episodes in, pretty close to what I was hoping for when I wrote my article as to why I was planning to watch it. In an article I published prior to the season premiere I said that I was hoping that the prequel could be something very close to Bates Motel meets Better Call Saul. I wanted to know how he put up the mask that fooled everyone at Miami Metro even more than how he became a serial killer, that I was far more curious about the younger versions of the detectives who would become part of Dexter’s work family and the backstories of his adopted family, particularly to see Harry beyond being a ghost and the voice in Dexter’s head and how the two of them related to Deb.

And  the opening credits for Original Sin make it clear in a sense that’s what we’re going to get. Yes the opening has the same music and Easter eggs to every aspect of the original opening but the difference its taking place in the Morgan household and a young Deb and Harry are doing variations on the same things Michael C. Hall did. This isn’t just a nod and wink to fans: it indicates that this show is going to be about Dexter’s family as much as it the teenage Dexter.

The series shows a different world from the one we got from Michael C. Hall’s version. Unlike our past perception where we assumed Harry trained Dexter to follow a code and become the killer he was, this version shows a Harry who clearly doesn’t want Dexter to be who he will end up being. Dexter (Patrick Gibson here) is attending pre-med clearly at the desire of his father (Christian Slater here) who thinks that working on the dead will help him channel his urges. Teenage Dexter knows better by now but Harry is clearly fighting it.

We saw Dexter’s first kill in the original series when Harry ended up in the hospital and Dexter found out that Nurse Mary was actually killing him. She was his first kill and in Season 1 we assumed Harry had approved it. Now we see it from a different perspective and it actually makes it clear that Dexter may have been trying to earn his father’s tacit approval in a way that could save his father’s life and satisfy his urges.

Original Sin also did what the best prequels do and fill in gaps the original left out. This version is far more sympathetic to the teenage Deb (Mollie Brown is superb). We see from the start that Harry’s almost single-minded focus on Dexter has led him to ignore Deb entirely. She’s an angry teenage girl trying everything in her power to earn her father’s attention and affection and as we see over and over, he clearly can’t connect with her. When her father suffers his heart attack Deb is clearly affected by it and does everything in her power to make her father have a healthy diet to keep him alive and Harry is a bad patient. In the second episode he tries awkwardly to reach out to her anger and Deb, completely justifiably, argues that he spends all his time with her brother. She feels isolated, more so since her mother died. Watching the show you see that Harry believes security equals love but that Deb clearly doesn’t feel that way.

And this series gives us something the original show couldn’t – insight into Harry Morgan. We learn that there was a child before Dexter and Deb in the Morgan household – and that the toddler drowning in the swimming pool while Harry was distracted. During this same period Harry began to work on bringing down a Colombian Cartel which brought him into contact with Laura Moser, whose arrest and being turned into an informant we see for the first time. Critically he comes home to tell his wife this, only to learn she can’t have children. Not long after that we see him meeting the young Brian and Dexter for the first time. It’s worth noting Brian looks at Harry suspiciously the first time he sees him; perhaps he knows what a threat Harry is.

The show is fun in many ways in parts of Dexter’s backstory: it shows a teenager who just isn’t that good in the first kills he makes and who doesn’t quite have the ability to be a good actor. There’s also a possibility that much of Dexter’s early awkwardness was written off as being an awkward teenager, at least at first. Dexter ends up getting an internship at Miami Metro when he goes to a career fair and meets the young Vince Masuka. Vince is the one character who doesn’t seem to have the same depth as any of the other ones we meet in the prequel, though it’s worth noting it actually seems more palatable in the teenage version of. A lot of us are sexual obsessives at this age; it’s just not clear that Vince grew out of who he was. (But to be fair, neither did Dexter.)

What is clear is that Dexter was a prodigy when it came to recognizing spatter patterns when he was young and that registers first with Vince and then Tanya, the head of forensics. Sarah Michelle Gellar is only a guest star as Tanya and doesn’t have as much presence as the other co-stars. But as always Gellar makes her scenes count, particularly prior to their meeting, we know that Tanya is as good at her job as Dexter will be. This is the 1990s and we are in a male-dominated field but it’s clear from an opening crime scene when Miami Metro is dealing with a home invasion series of murders that Tanya is treated with a respect equal to the detectives.

We also get a clear sense of something I was hoping for: Harry on the job. It’s clear from the start he has earned his place in Miami Metro and is respected both as a cop and as a friend. Detective Batista (James Martinez in this version) clearly looks up to him, we meet his partner going back to the Moser bust (Reno Wilson) and Captain Stamper (Patrick Dempsey is a world away from McDreamy here). There’s clear camaraderie and respect that when Dexter walks into his father’s world for the first time he is astonished by. “My father had many friends, and I didn’t,” the voice of Michael C. Hall says.

There’s also signs that Harry may actually be a better cop that some people there. In the third episode we meet Maria LaGuerta (Christina Milan) for the first time. Stamper who has seemed like a stand-up guy before goes out of his way to publicly shame Maria because she did the unforgivable and openly criticized the racist patriarchy of the police force. Stamper assigns her to cold case clearly as punishment and insists Harry keep an eye on her. “She’s a climber,” he tells her in no uncertain terms.

LaGuerta is, in many ways, the most interesting member of both series we meet here. The younger Maria is clearly angry at the system of policing and she is clearly a victim of the sexism of the time. Harry tries to bond with her over coffee while sending a warning signal and Maria tells him outright that it’s very clear the victims who matter in this squad and who doesn’t. He tells her when she goes on a witness hunt that they told his partner and her they didn’t see anything. But at the end of the episode LaGuerta, clearly by the advantage of her race and gender, has managed to get a witness to give them a lead. Harry admits he’s wrong for the first time.

This is actually something I’d like to see the show pursue: how did the characters we see here become who they are in the original series? LaGuerta’s the most interesting version because by the time we meet her, she’s purely a political animal and has become far more interested in results and the chain of command then getting cases solved. And it’s worth noting that Deb is equally interesting here because in a sense she’s like the character we see in the original series: she just wants to be loved and she knows that her family is keeping secrets from her. The show also makes it clear that at this point Dexter and Deb aren’t nearly as close as they would be as adults: on the contrary Deb can’t stand her brother and Dexter can’t connect with her. But it’s clear as the series progresses that this is something she desperately wants to do – and in an odd way Dexter wants to help.

I haven’t talked much about the actual caliber of the acting and writing of Original Sin itself so let me just say right now that the entire cast is superb. With the exception of Brown all of the younger versions of the original characters act and gesture like the ones we already know but there are subtleties that the original missed. Patrick Gibson is clearly more open in a way that Michael C. Hall isn’t and more awkward then the original. Cristina Milan wears the heels and earrings of Lauren Velez but there’s more of a sign the confidence she carries is more of a front. James Martinez has the fedora and goatee of Angel as well as the connection to the Cubano community but he’s also clearly still wet behind the ears. (He’s also clearly not married yet; the first time he meets with LaGuerta he tries to chat her up.) And Christian Slater comes off by far the best because his Harry is finally allowed to be three-dimensional, someone who was carrying the burden of his family long before he even met Laura. The show implies even more than the original did that much of Harry’s bad habits can be blamed on having to carry the weight of Dexter on him, and there’s a strong implication that even if he hadn’t taken action into his own hands, the drinking and smoking he had to deal with as a result of the guilt might have carried him anyway.

The show also gives hints at characters that I hoped would show up in some form, including in the second episode Dexter’s first meeting with a younger Camilla in the records department. Interestingly the major angels of Dexter’s nature in Original Sin are also all women. Here we see Camilla, showing Dexter that the best way to bond with your colleagues is not with a vegetable plate but with doughnuts. Here is Tanya, giving Dexter a hazing ritual but also being willing to listen to him when he comes up with theories about a murder that turns out to be accurate. And here we clearly see his first real efforts to be a good brother to Deb even though, in keeping with the original series, we know up front theirs blood and deception involved.

And while we know he can’t get caught in this version of events the show makes it very clear that Dexter is at best an amateur when it comes to feeding his hunger. The first time, he takes a trophy from Nurse Mary that ends up on the ears of one of Deb’s friends. The second time, he manages to get rid of everything but a severed leg pops up to the surface of the swamps where he’s disposed the body. We know, given the way the show works, that someone is going to come close to who Dexter is and may very well end up paying the price. We know who it can’t be but there are a lot of possibilities.

Original Sin does much to go beyond the idea of a serial killer origin story and then some. I suspect its only a one time thing (there seem to be plans for a Resurrection in the summer) but I can’t help but think I’d rather spend as much time as possible in the world of Original Sin. I’m not interesting in Dexter’s future as we already know where it leads. One of the teasers says that ‘It Takes a Village to Raise a Killer.” I’m interested in the killer to be sure, but a part of me wouldn’t mind spending as much time in the village as possible.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Did The 26th Amendment Fail, Part 1: The Tumult of the 1960s and The Ease of Passage of the Amendment

 

 

The fundamental right at the heart of any democracy is the right to suffrage. In America there has always been immense debate as to who is qualified to have it. The Founders themselves had a long debate over whether direct democracy was a good idea and it took thirty-five years from the time of George Washington for Americans to have a wide say in their choice for President in 1824.

Over the next century various amendments were added to the Constitution that enshrined the right to vote for citizens of the country who were not enfranchised. It was usually a struggle of decades, violence and bloodshed were required and generations frequently died without realized the fruits of their victory. Before she passed in 1906 Susan B. Anthony said that she had spent 60 years fighting for a little liberty “and then to die without seems so cruel.” It was another thirteen years before the ratification of the 19^th amendment.

Frequently their was division among the allegiances that were made. Anthony’s colleague Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an abolitionist and worked tirelessly to with her colleagues to bring about the end of slavery. But after the end of the Civil War the suffragist movement fractured when Frederick Douglass a long time ally chose to argue from suffrage for his brethren in bondage rather than his white female allies. African-Americans did receive the right to vote in 1870 but the fracture between the two groups may have cost the suffragists decades in the struggle.

By comparison the struggle to lower the voting age from 1941 to 1971 was almost painless. It began to receive support as early as 1941 and became a topic of interest at the local level almost immediately. The Second World War had been a major factor in this. During that time the slogan “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote” was used by young people. That slogan took on a new ferocity during the war in Vietnam.

The movement worked in conjunction with the Civil rights movement and other movements of political change during the 1950s and 1960s. It received bipartisan support very quickly and while opposition did exist it passed faster than any constitutional amendment in our nation’s history and with bipartisan support. Less then three months after it left the legislature by the required ¾ of the numbers of states. Yet unlike with every other major act to enshrine the right of suffrage to a certain group, from the start of its passage to the present day the people affected by it the most have never embraced it the same way. Indeed with each subsequent election for the twentieth percentage dropped among those effected precipitously. By the end of the 20^th century less than a third of all 18-24 voters had participated in the Presidential election. During the 1960s marchers had claimed that if they were old enough to fight they were old enough to vote. Based on the historical evidence, they showed little interest in doing either.

In his State of the Union Address in 1954 President Eisenhower became the first President to publicly supporting prohibiting age-based denial of suffrage for those eighteen older. The following year the Kentucky legislature approved measures to lover the voting age to 18, the second state after Georgia to do so. That both of these states had no problem with 18 year olds voting but the idea of African-Americans attending school is one of many ironies that involve the 26^th amendment.

Not long after he ascended to the White House, the President’s Commission on Registration and Voting Participation encouraged LBJ to lower the voting age to 18. This happened not long after Johnson proposed the passage of the Civil Rights Act before Congress.

During this relative short period of time all three branches of Congress worked together to bring more civil rights to more underrepresented groups than at any time in the nation’s history. Not coincidentally during this same period saw the birth of two divergent movements in the American political system. The conservative movement, initially represented by Barry Goldwater and Strom Thurmond, would more or less gamble on the idea that many Americans thought the country was moving too fast compared to the past. The leftist wing would be guided by two contradictory and seemingly conflicting impulses: that the country was not moving nearly fast enough and the idea that somehow the country had failed them.

The latter impulses found the most traction as America increasingly turned against the War in Vietnam. In that movement one finds what could be called the Lost Cause of the counterculture which among that generation has held as much sway as that of the Confederacy did in the South a century earlier, only in this case the delusion has been far more widespread through academia and Hollywood.

In the prevalent interpretation the student movement were protesting against a government that was lying to them about the war in Vietnam and they were engaging in a battle for the conscience of America in which ‘the system’ won. The interpretation held by the right – particularly the conservative movement that Nixon and Reagan led – this movement was led primarily by a bunch of spoiled children of privilege who were spitting on everything their parents had fought for all their lives. The evils of Richard Nixon and the lies about Vietnam have led the left’s interpretation to win the argument but there is as much truth now as there is then to the right’s interpretation.

During this same period one notes a radical shift in political activism on the side of the left. From the abolitionist movement to the progressive movement all the way down to the Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King, activism was built on demonstration combined with winning over the people who counted – elected officials. These struggles frequently involved violence but more often by its opponents and were built on winning the hearts and minds of the nation.

The student movement saw a decided shift to what I called performative activism. These involved marches, campus take over and in the case of the March on Washington, an attempt to levitate the Pentagon for the purpose of raising awareness alone. The anti-establishment movement, which followed a similar ideology of William Lloyd Garrison, argued the system was so fundamentally corrupt that attempting to change it through political means was pointless even if young people had the vote in the first place. The marches became louder, the protests became more violent and the demands were vague if non-existent. It is unclear if the Abbie Hoffmans and Tom Hayden’s of the world had any clear idea what kind of change they were demanding now and how these demonstrations were supposed to achieve it. It is unclear if these protestors truly believe that screaming names at the people in charge and blaming them for the problems in the world today was going to convince them to join them on the ramparts; the idea that they could somehow overthrow the entire government – which controlled the police force, military and financed the very colleges which the students now considered part of the problem – genuinely seems like the kind of thing only people smoking so much drugs could believe possible.

And yet the myth persists among this cause that they were this close to something and then the system failed them. It never seems to have crossed the collective consciousness of the left, then or now, that the whole world heard what they had to say loud and clear and didn’t agree with it. Many did believe in the failures in Vietnam in the lead up to the 1968 election. Two months after saying he would not stand for another term, Johnson proposed an immediate national grant of suffrage to the very people who were chanting: “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” There is no record of whether those students knew this or if it made any difference in their opinions about being granted this recognition.

By contrast to the turmoil on the streets the movement to grant voting rights to eighteen year olds was one of the most painless and met with the least objection in our nation’s history to that point. In 1970 Ted Kennedy proposed amending the Voting Rights act to lower the voting age nationally. On June 22^nd of that year, President Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights that required the voting age to be 19 in all federal, state and local elections. Nixon admitted he had misgivings about the constitutionality of that part but he instructed John Mitchell to cooperate in a swift court test of this process.

Richard Nixon and Ted Kennedy had what was for them a relatively civil disagreement about this fact. Kennedy argued that if Congress acted to enforce the 14^th amendment but passing a law declaring that a type of state law discriminates against a ‘certain class of persons’ the Supreme Court would led the law stand if the justice could perceive a bias. In a letter to the Speaker and other house leaders Nixon asserted the issue was not whether the voting age should be lowest but how. Nixon was afraid that if age was used as a parameter of discrimination the concept would be overstretched and argued about the disaster of overturning the Voting rights act.

In Oregon vs. Mitchell the court upheld Section 302 that lowered the voting age in Federal elections by a 5-4 margin. In a separate 5-4 ruling the court held it was unconstitutional in state and local elections. Justices Douglas, Brennan, Marshall and White agreed it was constitutional on both counts while Justice Black agreed it was constitutional for federal elections but not local and state.

There was compared to other voting rights acts relatively little opposition. Emmanuel Celler, one of the biggest forces behind the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, insisted that youth lacked the ‘good judgment’ essential to good citizenship. Some academics argued that the ‘exaggerated reliance on higher education as well equated technological savvy with responsibility to intelligence were being used as an argument for voting. Tellingly he argued that common sense and the capacity to understand the political system grounded voting age restrictions. But by that point Birch Bayh, head of the subcommittee on constitutional amendments had begun hearings on extending voting rights. He concluded most states could not change their state constitutions in time for the 1972 election, mandating national action to avoid chaos at the polls.

On March 2, 1971 Bayh’s subcommittee and the House Judiciary Committee approved the proposed amendment to lower the voting age to 18 for all elections. Three weeks later it had passed both houses of Congress, the Senate unanimously and with only 19 Congressman voting in opposition. By June 30, it had been passed by the requisite 38 state legislatures and on July 5^th Nixon signed into law.

Besides from the argument by Celler there was no real opposition. There were no filibusters on the Senate Floor as had been the case with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and no equivalent of Phyllis Schlafly to stop it as their would be with the ERA at the end of the decade. George Wallace, who had done everything in his power to break up marches in Selma, went out of his way to argue that Alabama had been the official state to put it into law. And Nixon, who the counterculture considered public enemy number one and who had to consider that his reelection would be imperiled by an onslaught of young voters, talked about his confidence in the youth of America during the signing ceremony:

“…I sense that we can have confidence that America’s new voters, America’s young generation, will provide what America needs as we approach our bicentennial, not just strength and not just wealth but the ‘Spirit of ‘76’, a spirit of moral courage, a spirit of high idealism in which we believe in the American dream, but in which we realize that the American dream can never be fulfilled until every American has an equal chance to fulfill it in their own life.”

Considering the man who said it, one is inclined to take it with a grain of salt. But the election of 1972 was fast approaching and during that election it showed its first real test of young Americans electoral power.

In the next article I will look at how George McGovern’s resonance with the youth movement completely failed to lift him to the White House despite being in theory everything both they and the New Left wanted in a President.

 

Homicide Rewatch: A Shot In The Dark

 

Written by Jorge Zamacona

Directed by Bruce Paltrow

 

During the first season the writers were faithful, as far as storylines went, to David Simon’s book. Every episode of the first season has as least one major plot or element from it. This is particularly true of this episode which not only continues the avenues of the Adena Watson investigation and the Chris Thormann shooting as they played out, more or less in real life, as well as an additional case that is briefly discussed in the book.

And it’s worth noting that in many cases the way these investigations were pursued were far from the thing viewers expected in police dramas to that point and wouldn’t really see again until Simon began taking it to the next step in The Wire. You could even argue one of the major plots of this episode – Felton and Pembleton searching every car lot in Baltimore hoping not to find a potential suspect’s car – is the kind of thing that Herc and Carver would pursue on the show a decade later. There’s even a similar level of humor to it the same way Carver would begin the work of Fuzzy Dunlop in the attitude of Felton’s almost lackadaisical attitude towards trying to buy a car in one of Ike’s lots.

But there’s a big difference between the antics we see from those two and what we see here and that’s because of the subtext that Pembleton puts under the dialogue at the start. Felton starts the investigation with a theory that for him is actually fairly well-thought out. He argues that the reason that the ME can’t pin down time of death is because Adena’s body had been killed earlier then they thought and stored in a cool, dry place – like the trunk of the car. The theory he lays out is pretty solid for him but Bayliss, who has now focused his investigation entirely on the Araber, refuses to follow this lead. Pembleton, however, jumps on it and given his attitude towards Bayliss to this point on the show, you might think he is doing so to prove that he is right and Bayliss is wrong. The fact that he’s willing to go with Felton – a man we already know he dislikes – to follow this hunch seems to prove it to the viewer – and perhaps to Felton himself.

Their suspect tells them that his car got repossessed by Ike’s Auto Repair. Felton and Pembleton believe this is a lie and in order to prove it, they need to search Ike’s repo lot and not find the car.  But when Felton forgets, as we sometimes do, the name of an old street, Pembleton takes it to mean something deeper. Felton argues that not everything is about race or directed at Frank Pembleton. Pembleton doesn’t deny that directly.

They then go to the first lot and they don’t find the car. They go to another lot. Still no car. By this point we are engaged in one of those ideological discussions that Homicide did so well with Felton talking first about the terminology of African-American (then a relatively new identity term) and then arguing less subtly about affirmative action. Pembleton takes a tone he will often do that seems almost militant, first lecturing about slavery and then arguing that he wants to achieve things purely by merit. It’s a fascinating discussion on its own merits but it also leads us to continue to believe that Pembleton is convinced of his own self-righteousness more than anything.

Then the lot owner tells them that they’ll have to go to Rosedale and Felton goes back to his old self and starts equivocating about driving all over Maryland. He mentions that for Pembleton this is all about being right. Frank gets angry but not in a way we’re used to. His voice gets lower:

“All night I’ve listened to you philosophize and criticize…I don’t care about proving Bayliss wrong. I don’t care about what you think. What I care about is finding the man who butchered and molested an eight-year old girl. If that’s too much trouble for you, go home.”

To this point we’ve come to believe Pembleton is all about brashness and ego. This is the first time we’ve seen that Adena Watson’s murder has affected Frank as much as it has Tim and that there’s a human being behind the rage. It may also be the first time we really got a look at how great an actor Andre Braugher would be on Homicide.

They do find the car in Rosedale and they hope that a stain in the trunk might be dried blood. But it isn’t. Felton goes back to the office and can laugh it off. Frank can’t.

Bayliss is going through his own crisis; by this point his health has suffered that he’s fighting a horrible cold. He’s trying to press the Araber again and is holding back a detail that the press doesn’t have yet to try and bludgeon him with. But (again in keeping with the original investigation) at a neighborhood watch meeting Bonfather pressed for details reveals that detail to the media, inflaming Bayliss.

An infuriated Bayliss calls Bonfather at home, disturbing his meal and in an act of sheer rage calls him a butthead. (No doubt the harshest insult 1990s censors would allow the writers to get away with.) Bonfather comes in that night, demanding Bayliss apologize. Bayliss, understandably, is irate: Bonfather is the person who endangered the investigation and undermined his detectives. He does owe Bayliss an apology. In earlier shows he would have gotten one. In Homicide Giardello tells Bayliss that while he has the high ground Bonfather has rank and that’s all that matters. This is something Gee’s clearly learned the hard way; when a dejected Bayliss walks out of the squad room he tells him: “The first time is the hardest.”

Bayliss has run out of energy by the end of the episode and thinks he should cut his losses. Giardello tells him to go home and get some sleep. That night Pembleton knocks on his door and tells him he found the missing lab report and that the smudges on Adena’s dress are soot from the Araber’s barn. This is the first time Pembleton acknowledges that Bayliss’ instincts were right and he agrees its time to bring the Araber for questioning.

We’re also following the next part of the Chris Thormann shooting where the fallen officer is recovering in a way that makes his attending surgeon “want to go back to God.” It might seem to the viewer of today that Thormann’s remarkable recovery – he’s able to speak and is forming sentences – might well be a gimmick of television of that era. In fact this is a case of truth being stranger than fiction: the real-life inspiration for this character actually recovered quicker than is seen on the show.

It's worth noting the suspect in the shooting Alfred Smith turned himself in the moment he knew he’d been named out of self-preservation: he fully expected to get shot ‘resisting arrest’ and doesn’t believe for a moment that the truth is going to save him from being taken out into an alley. (Hard to argue with his logic.) For those who might be wondering whether this is done to soften police in general, again, everything that happens in this storyline does follow Simon’s book to the letter.

Crosetti believes Smith is the killer but Lewis is not as sure. He wants to bring in Charlie Flavin for a lie-detector test and Crosetti is not happy about this. Later that night Danvers tells them they don’t have enough evidence to get a conviction and while he understands the pressure they’re under, he says he wants to offer 30 years. Danvers knows that this is not a suspect that deserves the best justice, but he also doesn’t like the odds. In this case he is not like the kind of prosecutor we’d seen on Law & Order.

Meldrick starts chasing down every neighbor he can find and ends up talking to an old lady who knows everything without meaning to. She leads him to the right shooter – Charlie Flavin. Charlie has had a bad attitude since Crosetti found him, and while he keeps blaming his migraines he is utterly unrepentant about what he has done. The case is closed – but not forever as we’ll see long after the viewer’s forgotten it.

The new case features Bolander investigating a drug deal gone wrong and while he’s been grumpy before now, as Munch puts it, he’s like a bear. To be fair Munch isn’t exactly doing the best job of policework on the Cole shooting and his theory on what happen kind of does merit Bolander’s argument of ‘the depth of his stupidity’. But there’s more to it than that given how Stan is doing everything in his power to avoid having a conversation with Dr. Blythe: he is reminded by Scheiner at the crime scene and she calls him twice in the squad.

It takes a while for Bolander to get the root of  his issue, and by that time he’s gone out of his way to have a conversation with a prostitute about it before he starts to open up. Again it comes back to his ex-wife, this time the issue is about how their sex life ended up dying. Munch asks him, with his lack of subtlety, if he forgot how. It’s not until he has the conversation with Blythe - who not only tracks him down to the squad=room but into the holding cell where there’s no privacy – that he finally admits his insecurities. It’s not a graphic conversation but it’s far more intimate then many we’d get on cable TV in just a few years, particularly because it’s the man who’s upset he disappointed his partner. And Blythe admits it wasn’t great – but that’s not enough of a reason for her to give up on him. You can decide whether that makes her more or less of a feminist than Carrie Bradshaw; I personally would prefer this kind of frankness.

The comedy in this episode also comes from the main investigation: the murder of Joseph Valentine Cole. There’s a witness to the crime and she’s hiding in the doghouse. Eventually we come to learn that the man who did so was Newton Stewart, Cole’s bodyguard. Bolander and Munch find him with a minimum of effort and Stewart just surrenders.

The humor comes when he confesses. Lowell, the man who showed up threatened Cole and pulled out a gun. Stewart took out a machine pistol and shot Lowell. At one point Lowell grabbed Cole so Stewart, following orders to protect his boss “shot through Mr. Cole to get to Mr. Lowell.” (Again this actually happened.) Munch handles the interrogation and its worth noting that while Richard Belzer is funny when he’s not investigating he tends to be deadpan when he is investigating. He takes in every detail of the ridiculous nature of what has happened with no reaction at all. It’s only when Stewart reveals that “I was just doing what Mr. Cole paid to be do,’ that he delivers an eloquent punch line: “Very commendable.”

At the end of the episode Gee invites the squad out to toast Crosetti and Lewis for closing the Thormann shooting and keeping with the show Crosetti ducks out early and Lewis follows him, leaving the rest of the detectives behind. Lewis finds Crosetti at the hospital chapel and it’s here that Steve admits his flaws. He gives us the Crosetti family history in policing and he reminds us again of his own shooting. He did so in Gee’s office to force him to getting the case; this time, we see it from the hospital bed and we get a clearer idea of what it was really was. He admits his flaws to Lewis and how he solved the case, not him.

The episode I should mention with Munch bitching about the menu at the Wharf Rat where the squad has been eating and drinking throughout the season. Finally when someone breaks out the karaoke machine he says he’s going to shoot himself if he ever comes back to this place. Is this where the seed of the idea was for the purchase of the Waterfront, the bar that will become the major storyline of Season 3 and the squad’s hangout place from that point afterward? I don’t give the writers that much credit.

Besides the episode ends with one of those iconic moments: Munch singing a mangled version of Mack the Knife to the entire squad.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Future Inmates: Jennifer Harmon, who plays Alison Ashley, would later upon OZ as Mrs. Lang. She was a soap opera performer best known for her work in the 1970s How To Survive A Marriage and One Life to Live, along with later appearances on Guiding Light and Loving. She is not as far as I can tell related to Mark Harmon, even though she did appear on St. Elsewhere while he was also a cast member. Most likely that’s where Fontana, who never forgets, decided to cast her.

Detective Munch: There are a lot of great lines but I think the best one comes when Bayliss asks why the killer would even stay in Baltimore:

Munch: Because if he’s REALLY from Baltimore, he won’t go. He’ll talk about it enough, but he’ll never leave.”

In the midst of the conversation Felton says he can’t remember what the name of Burma used to be and Pembleton tells him its now thee Union of Myanmar. Pembleton was clearly well informed. Burma was a country in Southeast Asia named after the dominant Burman ethnic group inhabiting the region and was controlled by the British until 1948 when it was granted independence. In 1989, it was taken over by a military dictatorship who gave its current name. It’s hard to blame Felton for not remembering that by the way; I still sometimes call the Republic of the Congo, Zaire.

 

 

 

 

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.