;Everybody loves a good man-bites-hand story, which is why media outlets from the New York Post to the Associated Press went crazy last week reporting that $2.5 million Jeopardy! winner Ken Jennings had lashed out at the show, calling host Alex Trebek a robot and pillorying the series' producers for restricting answer categories to "effete left-coast crap nobody's heard of." Jennings quickly countered that the quotes were taken from a humorous essay he had posted on his blog (ken-jennings.com/blog), and were clearly meant entirely in jest.
;;;Nobody has to tell this Dog how dangerous it is for the general public to misread an intended satire — our lawyers are discussing that very issue right now with representatives of several U.S. Senate campaigns — so our heart instantaneously and instinctively went out to Mr. Jennings. But then we stumbled across another lengthy post he had left lambasting other classic game shows, and we had to wonder who was kidding who. Read for yourself and see what you think.
;;;Beat the Clock — Hoo, boy! If you think Jeopardy! is the height of elitist dissipation, you never caught this decadent craptacular, which was obviously put together by urban liberals with an axe to grind. The very concept — poor schmucks have to complete off-the-wall physical challenges before the timer runs out — was an ingratiating sop to the dehumanizing hustle and bustle of big-city life. It utterly rejected this country's foundation in the behavioral principles of the Midwest, where things have always gotten done in their own sweet time (preferably by good Protestants). That's not to mention how badly the show undermined traditional household roles: Nothing's sadder than seeing a humiliated breadwinner waddle across the floor of a TV studio trying to balance a Grade A egg on the end of a tablespoon. Last I looked, that was women's work, no?
;;;The Price Is Right — I can't believe that our nation's proud Nielsen families haven't yet surrendered this limp-wristed relic to the PETA-loving pansies that are its core audience. Yeah, go ahead and reassure us it's an imitation fur in that Showcase Showdown, Barker, you self-satisfied cadaver. Plus, is there anybody on God's green Earth who hasn't figured out that, when playing "Hi-Lo," you always pick the Dinty Moore Beef Stew? Jerks.
;;;The $20,000 Pyramid — Feminazis. Latte drinkers. CNN. Rob Reiner. Guys with "Kucinich '04" stickers on their Priuses. The ACLU. "People who hate America?" Ding ding DING!
;;The Wizard of Odds — Back when he was still made up entirely of organic parts, our old pal (and future cyborg) Alex Trebek hosted this short-lived daytimer, in which … well, nobody quite remembers what the object of the thing was. But I bet it had something to do with beating a tableful of NORML lobbyists at Texas Hold 'Em so you could win enough money to pay for your kid sister's abortion. And I'm sure it would be fun to watch the show in hindsight, scanning Trebek's face for hints of his coming assimilation by the Borg. I can still hum Wizard's catchy theme song, which saluted Android Alex as "the man with the money/makes a dark day sunny" and "the guy every day/[who] gives a bundle away." Hey, know what else comes in bundles? Industrial-grade fertilizer. And microchips.
;;;The Newlywed Game — Maybe I shouldn't have squandered my traditional-values rant on Beat the Clock: The God-fearing nuclear family was dead the minute that clueless hausfrau told Bob Eubanks that the strangest place she and her husband had ever made whoopee was in her butt. Nice message for the impressionable viewers of America, lady, who in a happier time were able to ignore the messy factoid that their mothers, wives and sisters even had a colon. (Note: Yes, I know there's some doubt out there that the "whoopee/butt" exchange actually happened. And I'll be happy to get to the bottom of it, the minute some Ivy League tenure junkie floats this blog a research budget.)
;;;Let's Make a Deal — If I had to pick one program that summed up everything bad about the ridiculously left-wing game-show genre, this would definitely be it. From the first minute of play to the last, Deal was a Technicolor monument to the welfare state: magnanimous busybodies giving out stacks of cash to pathetic charity cases in reward for their untapped vocational skills, like walking around with half a pound of paper clips in their purse. "Pick me, Monty, pick me! Or else maybe I'll have to get a job!" At least the studio audience had the good sense to dress up like pirates and toilet plungers, to show up society's noisy have-nots as the clowns they are. Somebody should have clued them all into the real meaning of hard work and sacrifice — like spending 74 straight episodes in the wilting presence of one Mr. Alex Trebek, for instance. You'll never know how much glazed staring a contestant has to put up with to get a measly $2.5 million out of that tightass.
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