If you know the game, the host provides the answer and the contestants then provide the answer to the question. In Final Jeopardy, the answer was “Abraham Lincoln called this document, which took effect in 1863, ‘a fit and necessary war measure.” 8th grader Thomas Hurley III had the correct answer but his spelling was off and he was penalised by the judges. The outcry in the twitterverse and other such avenues for the voice of the common man has been generally damning of Trebek. These include statement as:
“Alex Trebek really did come across as an ass to that kid. “Misspelled badly”? Really?”
The boy said that he was upset because he lost out on $3,000 over an extra letter. His father went further to say that Alex humiliated his son on national television. Well I looked at the clip and really do not understand people today. Firstly, I did not find Alex in anyway out of line or humiliating. The boy spelt the word incorrectly and a show that is known for its intellectual theme, a misspelling, no matter how “slight” cannot be given the green light. What do you think?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSvl7uKysaE
Now, what really got me ticked off about this is the strong objection of what was correct for what is wrong. This spelling debacle is a metaphor of our society where we defend our children when they do wrong instead of saying “That was wrong. This is how to do the correct thing.” They then grow up to be adults who see doing the “wrong” things as being “right” for them to move ahead. So as simple as the wrongdoing is, we need to tell our children what time it is.
