I caught by chance a minute of Jeopardy! yesterday. New episode? Old? No idea. Here’s what got my attention:
The category: American Poetry. The answer, for $800:
Poems by him include “Crowing Hen Blues,” "Po’ Boy Blues,” & “The Weary Blues”No one buzzed.
See also Black Jeopardy Misses, a YouTube compendium of similar fails. For instance:
The category: That Is the Question. The answer, for $800:
In 1851 in Akron, Sojourner Truth delivered a speech called this 4-word rhetorical questionNo one buzzed.
And I’m reminded of a moment in the documentary I Heard It Through the Grapevine (dir. Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley, 1982), in which Hoyt Fuller tells James Baldwin about a moment from the classroom, when he asked a student to read a quiz question aloud:
“And she says, ‘I have no idea who Malcolm Ten was.’”
“Ain’t I a woman?”
ReplyDeleteBut I don’t know the poet… (do I?)
—Fresca
PS. Eek, of course I do, but I had to look it up—Langston Hughes.
ReplyDeleteDidn’t SNL do a Black Jeopardy skit?
But I 100 percent do not know:
What is on Trump’s bum and legs.
(Ick.)
—Fresca
I’m a total fail on questions about hip-hop (e.g., one asking for the name of the Lil Wayne collaborator Big Sean, but that’s temporal cluelessness.
ReplyDeleteYes, the SNL skit is hilarious.
I didn't even understand the Malcolm Ten example at first when I read it just now... it was so stupid.
ReplyDeleteI saw both of the Langston Hughes and Sojourner Truth fail moments when they first aired. It's always excruciating to watch.
I knew “Malcolm Ten” might baffle for a minute — that’s the way it’s presented in the documentary, without an “X” to explain, and then you realize the student’s gap in knowledge.
ReplyDelete