I'm glad that he seems to have found peace as he neared the end. Here's an excerpt from the autobiography/memoir he published in July this year ("The Answer is... Reflections on My Life") that I thought was touching:
With the coronavirus, [our family] can't go out to eat, we can't go out to public places, even the park next door has limited its use. Here I am wanting to enjoy what might be the last of my days, and, what, I'm supposed to just stay at home and sit in a chair and stare into space? Actually, that doesn't sound too bad.
Except instead of a chair, I'll sit on the swing out in the yard. That's my favorite spot on the whole property. I used to do it with Mom. Just sit there and rock. No need to talk.
It's just very peaceful. I suppose the feeling I have sitting on that porch swing is similar to what people feel when they meditate, though I would never call it meditating. I just consider it goofing off, not doing anything.
Yep, I'll be perfectly content if that's how my story ends: sitting on the swing with the woman I love, my soul mate, and our two wonderful children nearby. I'll sit there for a while and then maybe the four of us will go for a walk, each day trying to walk a little farther than the last. We'll take things one step at a time, one day at a time.
In fact, I think I'll go sit in the swing for a bit right now. The weather is beautiful — the sun is shining into a mild, mild looking sky, and there's not a cloud in sight.
My takeaway thought: No matter how rich, how successful or how famous - most of us get the most satisfaction from the simple things in life. Never take even those simple things for granted, they will be the memories you may most cherish.
This reinforces my belief that humanity should pursue biological immortality through mastery of medical engineering.
The moments Trebek desribes are too fulfilling to be so precious. 80 years is a blink of an eye, and in my opinion, a soul like Trebek deserves much longer.
RIP, Alex. You were one of a kind and inspired millions. I am incredibly glad to have had the opportunity to meet you (and grateful to my wife for making it happen, as I would never have indulged myself). You played a huge role in making nerdy cool, in addition to bringing credibility back to trivia game shows.
You were an incredibly kind, witty, and passionate role model. Your ability to be simultaneously no-nonsense yet fully human was was second to none. You will be missed greatly.
(For Jeopardy! fans, I believe the show producers approached Jennings earlier this year and he expressed interest in taking over as host.)
One of the unfortunate aspects of growing older is witnessing the passing of people we know and care about. While I enjoy “skilling up” seeing my parents age, while natural, is a bummer.
Just now, I’ve been watching all the 007 movies from the beginning
Turns out I never saw them before, and I’ve been to all these “exotic” locations as the aspirations have been deeply woven into our society!
Everything is so familiar because the tropes have been done so many times since, even video games have spent the last few decades trying to accurately simulate these same circumstances, looking at you, Uncharted!
I got the biggest kick when he brought out a bottle of “Don Perignon, 1953”. I’m pretty sure HIRED sent me one of those from 2009 and my guests were very impressed and pleased when I used it.
This is correct, Jennings said (a while back but probably still true) that he doesn't want it. Short version: he doesn't want to uproot his family from Seattle to LA or have to commute between them. He also doesn't really want any more of a showbiz career than he already has.
From what little I've had a chance to see, it seems like being in show business can be kind of awful for you. I wouldn't blame him at all for saying "This bit is enough for me, thanks".
Probably my greatest honor was being called a "buzzsaw" by Alex!
He liked to verbally spar, always quick with a joke, a flair for the dramatic - a perfect fit for a TV quiz show host.
A small anecdote:
We filmed college Jeopardy in Columbus, Ohio. After taping was over, all of us contestants were all hanging out in the hotel lobby waiting for our flights.
Alex and the crew were doing some kind of local press thing in a nearby conference room.
Out of nowhere, into the hotel lobby walks .. Jerry Springer. He kind of just meandered into the lobby where we sitting and sat down, by himself, with no apparent agenda?
We being a bunch of not-too-shy college kids struck up a conversation and learned he was campaigning on behalf of some state Senator and they were going to use the same TV crew and setup that the Jeopardy! team was using to film some interviews.
He was very nice, and then Alex and the crew came out during a break and we all got a couple of pictures of us, Alex, and Jerry Springer.
A surreal meeting of two very different TV personalities!
Columbus, Ohio.. Out of nowhere, into the hotel lobby walks .. Jerry Springer
IIRC, Springer was the mayor of Cincinnati for a bit. I seem to recall he also got busted passing a bad check to a hooker. I don't think hookers take checks anymore.
One of the scenes I remember in "Catch me if you can" is that DeCaprio passes a bad check to a hooker (former beauty contestant, too...) and she gives him cash in exchange of the difference. You'd think they woulda learned!
> Jerry Springer. He kind of just meandered into the lobby where we sitting and sat down, by himself, with no apparent agenda?
I understand you indicated the actual reason 'film crew' but people in entertainment (or who write) often do similar in order to bank some content or idea for a future show. Talk to people see what's on their mind and then file it away for future reference. Comedians do that not like you get funny ideas sitting in a room not interacting with people.
> He was very nice,
When you think about it if you are a celebrity (and forgetting that you probably like attention) you have to be nice. You don't want people spreading around bad things about you. This is a theme that comes up a great deal.
It's like if someone shows up in the lobby for an interview. They are on their best behavior. Last thing they need is for someone (who they might talk to later) thinking they aren't nice.
Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, and we'll never know. Either way, your comment tears down the initial commentators memorable and positive experience, for a non-sourced based claim. To me it came off as more insensitive than insightful. Especially given the subject matter of this thread.
People can only report the behavior they witnessed and anything else should be considered suspect because you never know if the person making the statement may have an agenda.
As someone who moved to US 25 years ago - when neither internet was not ubiquitous nor Cable TV affordable, for this then young man, Jeopardy and Mr. Trebek offered a peek into Americanah that extends even today. I have lived in a dozen countries since, and every time I stream Jeopardy from wherever, mind latches to the comfort of a sparse apartment, shared with 2 other roommates, all equally enthused by figuring out what this large, lovely country was all about, through the questions from the show.
I, after a couple of attempts ended up being "screened" for the the show, and failed - Baseball and Civil War were the topics. I still do bad in these topics. Still much to learn, but thanks to Mr.Trebek, America offers a fleeting familiarity.
If anyone wants to witness the two sides of American popular culture, spend an hour between 7-8pm on ABC - For the first half you will see Jeopardy, and then a cheerful but vapid (by design) Wheel of Fortune.
I was telling my wife, two days ago, that CNN political host John King will be a good stand-in for Mr.Trebek and today I heard this news.
I will miss Mr.Trebek in a way that will last my lifetime.
I went to a taping about 4 years ago (so Trebek was 76ish). For those who've never been, the show is basically filmed in real-time, and the first thing they do during the commercial breaks is Alex re-records any cards that he might have flubbed so they can punch it in later during editing.
They film 5 episodes in a day, and maybe he had to re-record 1 or 2 per episode? I remember thinking that was incredible, and I still do. Even some of the things they re-recorded I wasn't sure why (possibly he mis-pronounced a foreign word I wasn't familiar with).
I guess taking 2 of my favorite musicians wasn't enough, 2020 had to come for the host of my favorite game show.
> I guess taking 2 of my favorite musicians wasn't enough
Rappers are getting murdered all the time lately, assuming that's what you're referring too. It's really gotten to me this year too, especially the situation in Chicago. I'm guessing most people on HN don't know that a very popular musician was killed just two days ago.
Yeah, I went to a college jeopardy taping, and the thing I was most shocked by was how fast it all went by. It seemed a lot faster in real life than on TV.
As straight edge as he seemed, I recommend tracking down the Howard Stern interview he did several years ago.
One of the highlights was he tried cocaine at a party via someone who worked for him (accountant maybe) and Alex said he didn’t like it. He also mentioned ingesting a large quantity of cannabis edibles not knowing you weren’t supposed to. He said he slept all weekend and didn’t realize how long he was out. Pretty interesting given I always thought he was a straight edge.
Alex Trebek was a favorite victim of Longmont Potion Castle. But what always stood out about those calls was Trebek’s kindness, his common sense, and his amazing refusal to lose his temper amidst the tsunami of diabolical absurdity that is an LPC call. Trebek was one of the very, very few call recipients who “won” at Longmont Potion Castle.
I have been watching Jeopardy! on Netflix and having known about Alex's health always felt that whenever it happens it will make me sad - I am sad but more than I imagined I would be. There was something about him that made me feel everything was alright. What a legend. RIP Alex.
[Also can we fix the last name typo in the title please - it's Alex Trebek not Trebeck.]
A sad day. Jeopardy has always been a pretty unifying cultural touchstone in large part because of his hosting style. A brief bio can be found on him on Wikipedia [0].
With no evidence, I always assumed there was a clean cut between jeopardy fans and wheel fans. Not to get political but it also felt as though that separation was along the blue / red divide. Back in the day when I would watch jeopardy at 7, I always had this compulsion to change the channel before wheel started. Again no evidence, just a feeling. I don’t know why, Pat and Vanna seem like nice people, I just can’t stand wheel, maybe because I suck at wheel whereas I could hold my own when watching Jeopardy. RIP Alex.
I always assumed there was a clean cut between jeopardy fans and wheel fans.
There isn't. The shows are sold as a package to the local stations, and the local stations very often sell the advertising for both shows as a package to local businesses because the viewership is similar.
For people with the time to watch the whole two hours, it's an opportunity to show your message multiple times, which improves retention.
That assumption is called elitism. Drop it and you’ll have a much easier time in life. Assuming an entire political base is just stupid shuts out huge opportunities in business, friendship, love, and personal growth.
What of what I said makes you think I look down on wheel or that its viewers weren't smart? I just said it wasn't for me and that they were a different demographic. I also added I wasn't any good at it and complimented its hosts. At least I started off with the conceit that I had no evidence. Seems like you're also making assumptions. Someone once told me me it is just stupid shuts out huge opportunities in business, friendship, love, and personal growth.
I love Jeopardy, and when it’s over, I absolutely avoid “Wheel” and switch channels to “Family Feud”.
I absolutely look down on the people on “Family Feud” - their weird semi-matching themed outfits, outrageously terrible answers to idiotic questions filled with sexual innuendo with the subtlety of a kick in the crotch - but I love to watch. It’s just more fun. I’m not sure what’s wrong with “Wheel of Fortune”. Pat and Vanna seem nice enough, but the show has the charm of a visit to the eye doctor.
Yep. My Mom who is her late 70's has watched both for many years. She loves them both for different reasons. This stupid assumption game is just another "I'm better than them" BS that creates artificial barriers.
> I always assumed there was a clean cut between jeopardy fans and wheel fans.
I'm sure there some purists as there are purists in anything. But purists are small portion of the overall audience.
The overlap fanbase between the shows were easily the majority. It's why they put the shows on one after another. Like you mentioned one got the 7pm slot and the other got the 7:30 slot. Networks do that when there is substantial common fanbase. They don't want a significant portion of the viewing audience to switch channels at 7:30.
That's not entirely unreasonable, although mostly wrong. I haven't heard it lately, but back in the 90s it was pretty typical to hear a joke along the lines of this one: "Meet Bob, a contestant on Jeopardy. He holds a PhD in Astrophysics from CalTech, and designs rockets at work. Now meet Sally, a contest on Wheel, a housewife from Ohio who is fascinated by small shiny objects" I think that was from George Carlin.
But the truth is almost everyone who watches one watches the other, especially in markets where they air back to back.
Although if you read Pat's Twitter, I can see where you might get the red/blue thing from. Pat is a Trump superfan.
Mr. Trebek brought generations together, at least mine. Jeopardy! and The Sound of Music are the two things my grandparents (b. 1920 and 1921, now deceased) and I (b. 1981) could always watch together and enjoy. Even when I was a 17 y/o delinquent shit I could always watch Trebek with grandma, and it just felt good. As others have mentioned - the passing if Mr.s. Trebek and Connery is the end of generation-spanning eras. I’m having a few too many drinks tonight as my own way of remembering them.
Some of my earliest memories were of watching Jeopardy with my dad when I was a kid. Alex and all the hard working staff on the show helped to inculcate in me, at a very young age, a deep desire and passion to always learn about and explore the world around me.
Though it’s called “trivia” there’s really nothing trivial about it. People who have no interest in these facts often express deep ignorance of the world and people from other cultures and places. I think people would come closer together and learn to reconcile our differences if we all took more of an interest in trivia.
Alex, you brought so much professionalism, dignity, and gravitas to the game show business. Your strength of voice and sincerity, together with the show’s simple format, elevated the game above the usual sensationalism and addictive patterns we see in other formats. Your tireless and selfless commitment to charity has made a difference to so many people around the world. Thank you and Rest In Peace.
> People who have no interest in these facts often express deep ignorance of the world and people from other cultures and places.
I think this is an unfair statement. Certainly there are facts that are not interesting to a large majority, doesn't mean that they are ignorant. Personally my brain does not work well with remembering specific facts, I always admire people who can recall so easily.
Anyway I do not want to take away from the thread, just a bit surprised at that sweeping statement, unless I misinterpreted it.
Personally my brain does not work well with remembering
specific facts, I always admire people who can recall so
easily.
Well, aside from Alex's masterful job of hosting, that's the brilliance of Jeopardy.
It's "trivia", but it does not thrive on facts that may be memorized by rote, such as "in what year was Napolean born?" or some such thing.
Notice that the "answers" are referred to as clues; it is really a game of inference and connection-making.
Here's how you play: you think about the clue, and think about the fact that nearly all of the correct responses are things you have heard of.
For example, if the clue is, "This New York Yankee once said: [insert amusingly mangled malapropism here]" you can think: well, there are perhaps ten New York Yankees who might be considered household names to the average middle-aged American. But only one of them is known for malapropisms: Yogi Berra. So, it's probably him, even if you've never heard that particular quote. And the show stays honest to this unspoken conceit: they will generally not try to "trick" the player.
It's not a test of whether or not you memorized quotations by baseball players, or read a book about Yogi Berra. It's a test to see if you can make that connection.
You can see the contestants on the show making educated guesses like this, frequently, usually multiple times per game. Again, that's why it's also a game of wagering. You are not stating unequivocally that you know the correct response; you are essentially assessing your confidence level in your response.
I think you're mixing up interest in the facts with interest in recalling and performing them.
In other words, even if you have no answer to the question, a curiousity or interest in the world makes Jeopardy appealing. People who lack that curiosity may "express deep ignorance of the world and people from other cultures and places," as the comment put it.
I qualified it with the word "often." Perhaps I should have said "sometimes." At any rate, I am only speaking from experience based on the people I've met. I have personally been ridiculed for expressing an interest in trivia facts, on more than one occasion.
I can thank Alex Trebek for inspiring the first ever computer program I made and actually distributed - a terrible "Jeopardy" game. Made it myself in Java (that I learned entirely from a paper book), then tried to "convert" the resulting JAR to an EXE using some weird converter, then burned the somewhat mangled result onto a bunch of DVD-Rs and gave them out. One of the most difficult parts of the "programming" process was copying and pasting the same few lines around the whole program, because I didn't yet fully understand scope and variables, hah.
When I was little (maybe middle school), I remember being frustrated at not knowing any of the answers to the show. Inspired by jeopardy, I joined quiz bowl (think jeopardy but for teams), and it really let me explore many different topics through my own curiosity. I still get most questions wrong when I watch the show but I can really embrace how learning in itself is a gift, even if you don’t win :)
He will be sorely, sorely missed. At the end of the day it's just TV but Jeopardy has been a part of my daily routine for the last twenty years, it certainly will feel strange without him.
When I was young me and my family would gather around the TV to watch Jeopardy every night. We would pretend to be contestants and try to give the questions before the contestants on TV could. It's definitely one of my fonder childhood memories.
I watched so much Jeopardy as a kid. And always there was Trebek being witty but kind as he and the contestants entertained me all that time over all those years.
I think when he gained his US citizenship became an american. Besides he lived most of his life in the US, marriedan american, had american children, chose to die in america and his best work is in america as an american. Not sure on the canada-us naturalization laws. But I distinctly remember he became a US citizen some time ago. Regardless of his nationality, truly a great loss. One of the iconic figures of american television.
So, when a Canadian adopts U.S. citizenship, they don't automatically cease to be Canadian unless they choose to renounce their citizenship. Dual citizenship is recognized.
According to Wikipedia, Alex moved to the U.S. in 1973 at the age of 33, became a U.S. citizen in 1998 at the age of 58. Trebek is very much regarded as a Canadian, even in Canada. (RIP)
One of the favorite pastimes Canadians have is that of pointing out Canadians whom people think are Americans. Peter Jennings (also RIP) and Alex Trebek are usually the first two that come to mind. Then there's Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, Joni Mitchell, etc. Recently I learned that HN's dang and sctb are Canadians too [1]...
> Peter Jennings (also RIP) and Alex Trebek are usually the first two that come to mind.
But they are americans. They chose to immigrate to the US and become americans. They didn't choose to be canadians. The only reason anyone knows about them is because of what they achieved in america as americans. They couldn't choose where they were born, but they could choose where they lived and died. Both chose america.
> One of the favorite pastimes Canadians have is that of pointing out Canadians whom people think are Americans.
Isn't it more like canadians pointing out the people who left canada to become americans? Isn't it rather pointing out canada as a failure and america as a success?
Contrary to popular mythology (mythology that is reinforced by the text of the citizenship oath but repeatedly rejected by US courts as representing the actual law), you don't (unless the foreign country requires it) have to give up foreign citizenship or nationality when becoming a US citizen, so generally people who become Americans retain whatever nationality they had before in a very real and legal sense as well as potentially retaining their former national identity.
So, no, “immigrated to the US” does not mean “stopped being Canadian”, in either the sense of identity or legal citizenship.
Trebek and the Jeopardy crew used to tour military bases around the world to greet the troops and give the qualifying exam in search of potential contestants. I got to meet him as a goofy young officer fanboy at Yokota Air Base in Japan in the late 1980's.
I asked to get a photo with him, and of course he was perfectly gracious. Still have it somewhere.
Thank you, Alex Trebek, for giving us a kind, polite, and dignified show that elevated education and knowledge. You were the perfect host for it and inspired millions of young adults, including myself (a long time ago).
Almost 20 years ago I had a brief conversation with Mr Trebek. Hew was working on the Canadian "Reach for the Top" trivia competition. He was half-way through giving me some "advice" when he stopped himself: "Sorry, I now realize you probably know how to do your job and I'll stop talking." Even when not happy, when other celebs could easily get hot headed, he remained a consummate professional. I never heard a bad thing said about the guy.
I got the chance to see him in action from being on the show, and he was probably the most impressive "people person" I've ever met. Just perfectly at ease telling stories and interacting with strangers, and he sets everybody else at ease also. I don't know how a person ends up like that, whether its a matter of innate talent, training, or a mix of the two, but I've never seen anything like it.
Has anyone calculated the ratio of simple questions that anyone can answer on a game show vs. the more difficult ones? Obviously there is a formula to keep people engaged by having low hanging fruit that everyone knows 'that's easy'. This would be an interesting topic for a paper or article.
Only Connect is hard. There and such random things that you have to put together from the normal educated things like a list of monarchs to crazy random things that are complete pop culture or it's a list of colors in the rainbow in binary. If you live in the UK watch it. If you do not you can generally find torrents of it (hint to BBC, if you sold TV licenses for streaming outside of the UK you would make more then you do in the UK).
Not sure how available it is to other countries, but there's a YouTube user "wheelsongenius" who has uploaded a ton of episodes, including the new season.
Everyone here should watch. It is the type of show that in general this crowd will enjoy. The host, Victoria Mitchell is wonderfully funny and quirky charming and also a poker player you may have seen. Her husband is the comedian David Mitchell.
I love Jeopardy and Trebek was fantastic. He was a calm, composed, reassuring voice in a sea of chaos.
I just can't fathom doing something you love so much until your very last breath. Trebek epitomized this - day after day - entertaining millions. A great man that will be sorely missed.
The saddest part of this is facing the harsh reality that Jeopardy cannot exist without Alex Trebek. The only hope for future episodes is an AI reproduction of Alex Trebek that's been well trained on his past shows.
Pancreatic cancer (and other abdominal-area cancers like stomach, gallbladder, etc) are notoriously hard to find and diagnose because they're almost completely asymptomatic. Once we see the cancer, it's in a place where it's noticeable like the lungs at which point it's in later stage metastasis.
Unfortunately there's not necessarily a cure that just needs more money. And enhanced screening has been a total dead end.
It takes about a year for pancreatic cancer to go from stage one to stage four. With improved biomarker detection in biannual blood tests, I think we’d make a lot of headway to earlier detection, with CRISPR for (more effective) immunotherapy treatment (vs surgery and chemo).
Maybe. But earlier detection isn't the panacea that we thought it might be in cancer.
The problem is--- staging isn't independent of the cancer's aggressiveness. If you detect a cancer at stage 2, it may be "earlier" detection, or it may be a much less aggressive cancer than one that would have reached stage 4 by the same point.
I also will miss him. He and Jeopardy were a fixture in our home, and life. What a great human.
I'm willing to work on this. I have lots of relevant experience, and a can do attitude. I've tackled (mostly successfully) similar challenges like artificial hearts, dialysis, AI and surgical robots. Coincidentally I'm giving a talk on making an artificial heart in 45 mins at the hackaday remoticon: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/remoticon-tickets-115886905855
I'm confident we could solve this problem. Lets do it.
1. how do we match talented people like you with organizations who could use help?
2. how can we model medicine to be more like open-source, where talented individuals can contribute in surgical ways, in case they can't afford to quit their jobs and focus on healthcare 100%?
~ 1 million people a year die of HIV/AIDS... It is endemic, which is why we don’t have a global lockdown for it, but it is still there killing about the same number of people as automobiles.
I'd like to hope that nothing is impossible but a cure for abdominal cancers is going to be one of the last cancers we figure out. They're basically perfect as far as being difficult to kill.
What are the problems with earlier stage screening? Without knowing much about pancreatic cancer screening in particular, it sounds like it might be one of those screenings that aren't recommended "because of the risk of false positives", which is a failure of the medical system rather than a deficiency in the medical technology.
Some cancer screenings aren't recommended below whatever age because if you have a false positive test, it may lead to worse outcomes due to anxiety, low trust in future tests, or large costs and risks from additional more invasive tests the doctors feel they have to recommend [0]. The medium term solution should be better education and cleverer processes for recommending the invasive tests - if the false positive risk is high, maybe just make sure they get screened again every year - but instead it's just to stop the screening. Pick your own narrative about whether the root cause here is poor application of medical ethics, fear of malpractice cases, or the principal/agent problem in health insurance.
Having less information should never be advantageous. And if the benefits are marginal, doing millions of screens "for real" incentivizes improving the process far more then when it's just a research problem.
Is early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer something like this that needs to be fixed in the "system" or just something we don't have the technology to do?
> What are the problems with earlier stage screening?
It's not false positives that are the issue. It's the huge number of false negatives. The standard biomarker we look for is only present in 70 percent of people with the cancer. Furthermore, only 5 percent of the people who present with CA 19-9 even have pancreatic cancer to begin with since it also presents with almost any other gut issue.
>which is a failure of the medical system rather than a deficiency in the medical technology.
The technology that we have to actually find pancreatic cancer is an endoscopy which is going to find a whole lot of stuff. 5 percent of the issues present on your pancreas are pancreatic cancer.
>Is early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer something like this that needs to be fixed in the "system" or just something we don't have the technology to do?
We simply don't have the technology. Below is a link with a bunch of statistics showing just how devilishly hard pancreatic cancer is to find before metastasis.
> Randy was so inspiring and we’ve made no progress since his death from it in 2008. ... Better treatments for a few cancers should have been included in there.
It's a slow, slow slog. But at least give the scientific world some credit. There's been a whole lot of improvements to cancer treatment in general in the past 12 years, and some small ones that are still very meaningful for some people for pancreatic cancer in the past decade (e.g., just in the past several months, Lynparza).
I witnessed an amazing nuclear medicine talk that showed how the power of a single radioactive atom delivered to the right cell can destroy it in one single decay.
The caveat was that the entire worlds source of these types of isotopes is only enough for one or two doses a day of targeted therapy.
The general theme of the talk was that centuries from now, this is what medicine will look like, but it will take humanity many years to raise the education threshold enough for people to want ‘nuclear’ in their backyard.
Another interesting tidbit was that the value of single fissile event used for medicine in this way was about ten thousand times more valuable than when used for energy generation.
FYI Steve Jobs had a neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer which is rarer and much more treatable than exocrine pancreatic cancers which are the kind Pausch and Trebic died from. There’s a lesson there too.
It seems like you have an opinion about whether or not Ken Jennings should get past it. Why else would you post something that is sure to spark a conversation about "cancel culture".
If you think the joke is too offensive, I would be glad to read your reasoning. I think the joke has a few interpretations, and some are more offensive than others, so hearing someone else's thoughts would be interesting.
But it's hard not to read this comment as an attempt to stir shit up for kicks.
It's politically incorrect and not very tasteful, but they're acting like it's Jennings who has to "get past" that six year old tweet when it's actually people like that HNer who link it any time his name pops up hoping that others tar him for it. It makes we wonder how much this HNer is still dwelling on it.
It's not the best joke but he's also not wrong btw. Let's not suggest that having shriveled up wheelchair legs is a boon in the dating market. It's just not nice to point out such inconvenient truths.
I agree that society would do well to consider learning forgiveness. Forgiveness though does require that the attack stop - repeating your agreement with some kernel of the post doesn’t help that effort as it reopens the wound.
I really really wish society to learn forgiveness. Life is too short - and the internet can be so incredibly destructive in its current lack of grace.
Forgiveness is the next moral step after accountability. Jennings took accountability and apologized [0]. Therefore, forgiveness is now where we go.
My comment is already getting too political and culture wars-ey to be suitable for HN, for me, but at the risk of pushing that further I would like to add this: the moral nitpicking and flogging of public figures needs to end.
There are real villains out there, like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby who need to be and have been held to account, and there are real issues out there, like ageism and sexism in hiring processes. Focusing on trivial matters like this not only doesn't help the movement to justice, but actively harms it.
A recent quote from Andrew Yang:
> “I would say, ‘Hey! I’m running for president!’ to a truck driver, retail worker, waitress in a diner, and they would say, ‘What party?’ And I’d say ‘Democrat’ and they would flinch like I said something really negative or I had just turned another color or something like that.” Yang told CNN host Don Lemon during a panel.
> “So you have to ask yourself, what has the Democratic Party been standing for in their minds?,” he continued. “And in their minds, the Democratic Party, unfortunately, has taken on this role of the coastal urban elites who are more concerned about policing various cultural issues than improving their way of life that has been declining for years.” [1]
To decry accountability as "public flogging" is not an example of accountability and apology. It's a pretty good example of a non-apology. It reads as evidence that he's really detached from the harm.
You are not the authority on what constitutes "trivial matters". You read as someone extremely privileged, and entitled, who would rather have their own trespasses swept under the rug.
I don't, by the way, give a fuck about the Democratic party. I am not a member. I do not care what their reputation is.
Accountability is a way for society to correct societal ills - put people in prison so they stop committing crimes and to serve justice, for instance. Forgiveness is a way for society to move forward. There’s an infinite amount of “tomorrow”, but few things need to be infinitely repeated.
Putting someone in prison is an external imposition of retribution, not an internal act of contrition. It's completely inadequate, especially when discussing micro-aggressions, or cultural acts of bigotry which dehumanize at-a-distance.
That's a very limited idea of attractiveness you have. For instance, you could say the same thing about trans people, and that might be true among mainstream straight people, but personally I found dating far easier once I transitioned, and find trans people hotter.
Also, disabled people often date each other, which comes with some downsides (like not having an able-bodied partner to be a caretaker), but means you're shielded from that icky stigma and you don't have a partner who's ashamed of you.
I'm glad things worked for you and I think people can always find someone to be with regardless of who they are but let's be honest, is it "a very limited idea of attractiveness" the GP has or are you just sidestepping "Let's not suggest that having shriveled up wheelchair legs is a boon in the dating market."?
Yes it's a horrible thing, yes it's horrible to tweet about... but you know what, it's also horrible to try to act like it's just not a hinderance and this kind of thing needs to be called out. It's great, in fact it's easier! No, it's not. It's significantly harder life. Nobody thinks "man, if I just woke up tomorrow without the use of the lower half of my body my dating life would be so much easier" because it wouldn't be easier, it'd be a great hurdle. In fact nearly everything would be harder. Again this doesn't mean you can't find happiness or that nobody will ever like you for you, I think that's literally impossible in this world, but this is unfortunately sure as hell not an easy path to either of those things. <- this also means you don't have to be in the same situation to not be "ashamed" of your partner, though some may certainly be it's not a requirement of how society operates.
I'm not sure you can make the jump "you could say the same thing about trans people" (more power to you) as the alternative to being or liking trans people is lying to yourself about who you like while the alternative to being disabled is being abled. One is all about who you are attracted to and who's attracted to you, the other is about being able or unable to use part of your body. Of course being true about the former leads to greater success in dating, the latter seems a bit of a stretch.
Please assume good intent. I don't believe the poster jumping in to attack the (ridiculous) idea that disabled people are inherently less attractive is trying to say that being ashamed of a disabled partner is inevitable or excusable.
Yes, thank you. I was speaking from experience: I have a disability myself (though I don't look it), so I've felt the stigma first-hand, but I don't think it's universal.
I've had partners who were ashamed of me before. My current partner isn't but still gets grossed out when my joints dislocate, though they know it's bad and try to help me when that happens. It varies.
Comedians like Dave Chapelle, Louis CK, Trey Parker & Matt Stone, Bill Burr, and many, many others, kick in every direction: up, down, left, right. Policing comedy with a lens of wokeness is a profoundly bad idea.
An anecdote: someone like Dave Chappelle is wildly popular on both the left and the right. Several friends of mine on the right devour his specials like a gourmet buffet. So when Chappelle gets up on stage and talks about his experiences with racism, police profiling, and inequality (as he did on yesterday's SNL monologue [0]), those same people on the right listen. They hear him. It moves the needle of justice forward by reaching an audience who otherwise wouldn't necessarily hear these stories.
This is not and has never been the "first rule of comedy". It's only very recently, since the scourge of wokeness, that people have been turning this shitty line. Comedy is comedy. Lots of different kinds of comedy can be funny. Stop trying to make it rigidly fit your world view.
Depends on the purity of the laugh you're after. Obviously there are roasts, but if comedy had a score it'd be laughs and cheap shots always split the laughs with groans.
I'm not saying he (Jennings) is wrong, just that it's a douche thing to say. I'm not sure how I feel about cancel culture and I don't think Jennings needs to get "tarred" for a tweet. That said, I also don't think he's being robbed of any basic human rights here and knowing this, I'd rather give the (presumably well-paid, relatively prestigious and very public) job of Jeopardy! host to someone who isn't on record as needing to broadcast a message with no known benefit to anybody.
Name some countries where you can be free of all social and economic repercussions for your speech?
You clearly can have the right to state your opinions. Other people also clearly have the right not to do business with you based on those stated opinions.
For me it’s because I didn’t know about the tweet, and I assume it simply isn’t that well known of a tweet. Why would it be, as a joke made in poor taste 6 years ago. However, the comment is written as if everyone implicitly knows about it. This to me is disingenuous. It may seem less vain to phrase it like that, but it feels more scummy. I assume the reason why is because the alternative would be going mask-off and admitting that the intent is to raise awareness of some stupid off-hand remark from 6 years ago, which I suspect wouldn’t land well on HN.
Could be wrong! But that was how I felt reading through this.
Do I defend the remark in question? No. But at least people should cut the shit and admit that saying something horribly inappropriate once in a while isn’t actually that weird. Funny how we all have people we know that have done this, often people like our close family members, then act like it’s the end of the world when someone moderately popular does it.
Let’s be realistic: nobody should care about this tweet. If it stops them from getting a job six years down the road, I would find that immensely more fucked up than the inappropriate joke itself. If Ken Jennings is actually a terrible person, it would probably manifest in more ways.
edit: Not that anyone thinks it would, but my opinion on this is not going to change due to a low score, so if you are stopping by to leave a vote please consider commenting to explain why you disagree. Otherwise, I am left puzzled.
With the coronavirus, [our family] can't go out to eat, we can't go out to public places, even the park next door has limited its use. Here I am wanting to enjoy what might be the last of my days, and, what, I'm supposed to just stay at home and sit in a chair and stare into space? Actually, that doesn't sound too bad.
Except instead of a chair, I'll sit on the swing out in the yard. That's my favorite spot on the whole property. I used to do it with Mom. Just sit there and rock. No need to talk.
It's just very peaceful. I suppose the feeling I have sitting on that porch swing is similar to what people feel when they meditate, though I would never call it meditating. I just consider it goofing off, not doing anything.
Yep, I'll be perfectly content if that's how my story ends: sitting on the swing with the woman I love, my soul mate, and our two wonderful children nearby. I'll sit there for a while and then maybe the four of us will go for a walk, each day trying to walk a little farther than the last. We'll take things one step at a time, one day at a time.
In fact, I think I'll go sit in the swing for a bit right now. The weather is beautiful — the sun is shining into a mild, mild looking sky, and there's not a cloud in sight.
(copied from https://www.nextavenue.org/alex-trebek-in-his-own-words which has a couple more excerpts from the memoir)