Example #832 That Life is in No Way a Meritocracy

Apparently there was a special series of shows on Jeopardy in 2004 (and perhaps after that) called "Power Players" in which the show was filmed in Washington, and the contestants were a bunch of political and media heavyweights. Alex Trebek had this hilarious quote in a USA today story:

Most of the regular Jeopardy contestants have read many books. Most of the power players have written many books. But will it make them better players? We'll see.

Well, I saw, and I can tell you that it most certainly did not. The show I viewed had Anderson "Back to you guys in the Hacienda" Cooper, Maria Bartiromo (you'd know her if you saw her) who's still on TV anchoring a bunch of those CNBC business/stock shows, and Kweisi Mfume who was President of the NAACP at the time.

It was painful. For one thing they dumb down the questions for these guys, like they do in celebrity Jeopardy or the ones where they have kids. Think of it, these people make policy and report meaningful events to the public and they have to make the questions less difficult than normal Jeopardy players.

Only Anderson had a positive amount of money after the first round. Despite the nature of the questions Mfume had only amassed $4000 by final Jeopardy and poor Maria (who was somehow still in the red) had to be given $1000 just so that she'd be able to participate in final jeopardy (talk about adding insult to injury). Just remember that the next time she's giving you stock tips. And, please don't be decieved by Anderson's shellacking of his opponents, or by this hilarious gloating column he penned for CNN, he was far from impressive. Thanks to the miracle of the Interweb you can see the questions and answers here.