July 25, 2006

What Is, "A Modest Proposal"?

Jeopardy ace Ken Jennings posted a tongue-in-cheek open letter to Jeopardy on his weblog, telling the show it needed to be more hip:

What I really wanted to talk to you about was your image. You’ve got a good twenty years on you now, and that’s Trebek-era alone. Times have changed since your debut, but when I watch you, it’s the same-old same-old: the same format, the same patter, the same fonts, the same everything as when I first crushed out on you in fourth grade. You’re like the Dorian Gray of syndication. You seem to think “change” means replacing a blue polyethylene backdrop with a slightly different shade of blue polyethylene backdrop every presidential election or so. Would you mind a few suggestions on how you might really freshen up your act a bit?

Jennings gets progressively weirder after that, with suggestions to have contestants run up and hit buttons on the answer board (like Nickelodeon gameshows) and to add categories like "The Arby's 5-$5.95 Value Menu" and "Skanks from Reality TV Who Got Naked in Men's Magazines," until he gets down to three final tips for modernizing the show:

  1. On Price Is Right, Bob Barker ends every show with a plug for his personal favorite cause. “Spay or neuter your pet!” or whatever. Something like this would humanize Trebek. I propose a new sign-off, along the lines of, “Can our returning champion do it again on tomorrow’s show? Tune in and find out, everybody. Legalize cannabis. Good night.”
  2. You know how Trebek likes to read foreign words in these thick, strained accents, thinking he’s being muy auténtico? He should continue to do this, but instead of delivering them himself, he needs to have a little ventriloquist’s dummy with a sombrero to pipe in with those words. (The sombrero can be switched with a beret for French words.)
  3. Whenever Alex says “Correct!” to a contestant, he should do the two-index-finger point, like Isaac in the Love Boat credits.

But here's the punchline: A backlash to Jennings' ungrateful attitude has emerged in the press. Here's the opening of an article in the NY Post:

"Jeopardy!" champ Ken Jennings has emerged from the "Where Are They Now?" shadows to bite the hand that fed him $2.5 million just a short time ago.

Well, the NY Post isn't actually one of my most-valued sources for good journalism, but the US News & World Report has a similar article.

Part of me is hoping that NY Post and US News & World Report are in on the joke, but I'm not optimistic.

[via metafilter.com]

Posted by johndanseven at July 25, 2006 11:02 PM