Nobody liked Arthur Chu. Mr. Chu was Jeopardy champion for 11 games from Jan. 28, 2014, until he lost the game on March 12, 2014. His winnings were $298,200. Which, at the time, made him the third highest winner in the history of the game.
What made Mr. Chu “Jeopardy’s Most Hated Champion” (Bustle.com 3/13/14) was his style of play. The traditional method of play had been to pick a column of questions (okay, a column of answers for Jeopardy purists) and deal with them top to bottom. Mr. Chu adopted the “Forrest Bounce” named for an earlier champion who originated the technique of jumping from column to column. Fans complained that this style of play would ruin the game – but it didn’t. In 2019, James Holzhauer combined the Forrest Bounce with very large wagers and won 32 games, setting records for single game winnings and a total of $2,464,216. The style of play was revolutionary, and remarkably successful – and fans complained that this style of play would ruin the game – but it didn’t.
The game returned to its classic pattern because Mr. Holzhauer was unique – not in his knowledge, but in his willingness to risk everything on a single question. There are lots of smart people, but Mr. Holzhauer’s combination of extensive knowledge and willingness to gamble for high stakes was rare. That Jeopardy has returned to its roots is a clear example of regression to the mean. The website theanalysisfactor.dotcom describes RTM as :”... a statistical phenomenon that occurs when unusually large or unusually small measurement values are followed by values that are closer to the population mean. This is due to random measurement error or, put another way, non-systematic fluctuations around the true mean.”
The pattern of exceptions to the average or normal expectations applies to government as well as quiz shows. The Victorian writer G. K. Chesterton described it in one of his Father Brown mysteries, “The Worst Crime in the World.” “Edward I governed England well. Edward III covered England with glory. And yet the second glory came from the first glory through the infamy and imbecility of Edward II ...” On some lists, James Buchanan has been considered the worst president in American history, but he was followed by Abraham Lincoln. In a 2006 Sienna Research Institute survey of historians George W. Bush was rated below average by 24% and a failure by 58%, but a 2017 C-SPAN poll rated Barack Obama the 12th best president and Bill Clinton the 15th. The top three are Lincoln, Washington and FDR – no arguments there.
The magazine Foreign Affairs (Sep/Oct 2020) devoted its subject to “The World Trump Made.” The commentary is not favorable to Mr. Trump, but the most important article is titled “A Grand Strategy of Resilience” by Ganesh Sitaraman who wrote, “The coming era will be one of health crises, climate shocks, cyber attacks and geoeconomic competition among great powers. What unites these seemingly disparate threats is that each is not so much a battle to be won as a challenge to be weathered.”
Perhaps the first good news comes from Washington, specifically the Washington Post, which now has over three million subscribers and is expected to add 150 newsroom jobs this coming year. The web site Deadline.com reported “… CNN drew 3.95 million viewers, followed by MSNBC with 2.69 million and Fox News with 1.48 million, according to Nielsen.” Two sayings come to mind – The WaPo’s banner line “Democracy Dies in Darkness” and Justice Louis Brandeis’ “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Kyle Pope of CJR (Columbia Journalism Review) wrote, “As I sit here in the fall of 2019, in the age of Trump and Facebook trolls and partisan propaganda, it looks to me like disinformation is winning,” but it’s 2021 now, and maybe not.
It’s too soon for a victory lap, but not too soon for a bit of optimism. President Trump repeatedly attacked the mainstream media and called the press “the enemy of the people.” He directed his followers to watch Fox News, and many did – but according to Comscore, a media measurement company, the New York Times web site had 128.627 million unique visitors in the United States — roughly half of all adults.
On Aug. 24, 1814, British troops entered Washington and set fire to the capitol and the White House. The War of 1812 featured Oliver Hazard Perry’s famous “Don’t give up the ship” and the Battle of New Orleans made into a movie as The Buccaneer – but the most lasting memory of that war is a single line from our national anthem: “our flag was still there.” It’s a symbol of our nation – and its resilience.
Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in Louisville, Ky. Email sdu01@outlook.com.
From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2021
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652