June 03, 2014
One explanation for the latter phenomenon”the sudden surge in female winners”comes from 2003 College Tournament champion turned daily Jeopardy! vlogger/wager analyst Keith Williams:
In the past, they were a lot more focused on what we call “hard knowledge” and historical facts, dates, who wrote what book, and so on. Now you”ll see entire categories devoted to Taylor Swift or celebrity reality shows. I wouldn”t say that women are necessarily better in those categories, but that is a consideration.
Then there’s that betting thing. Trebek earned his reputation as a misogynist in part by observing that female contestants think of those dollar amounts on the blue screens just below their waists as “real” cash, and are therefore hesitant to risk it. Men, however, rightly view those digits as virtual “house money.” That cash isn”t real until they win it, and they stand a better chance of doing so by placing a big, bold bet.
Hey, I”m just glad well-off, white American women have discovered something new to bitch about. #FreeOurGirls was getting boring. Thank God Elliot Rodger came along, so they could invent a new hashtag, #YesAllWomen.
(I”m one of those “all women” and still don”t really understand what this one is in aid of”something to do with being wolf-whistled at by construction workers. Which, as I”ve written before, has never happened to me, alas. The closest I ever came was a couple of years ago, when a workman repairing a Toronto sidewalk yelled, “I love your T-shirt!”, which read “IT’s NOT RACIST IF IT’s TRUE.”)
Someone who picked up on the #YesAllWomen meme? Notorious Jeopardy! contestant Arthur Chu, who gained notoriety during his brief but eventful run as “that angry nerd.”
Following Elliot Rodger’s killing spree, Chu composed a widely-read essay confessing the multitude of woman-hating “sins” committed regularly within his (and, supposedly, Rodger’s) male nerd “culture.” (Mea culpa, meus Maximus Prime?)
Meanwhile, two Indian teenagers were gang-raped and murdered when they were out looking for a place to take a crap. It’s a situation that plays out all over the world every day, but it’s easier and more fun to complain about the tribulations of women on Jeopardy! rather than in it.
