NYT’s Tom Friedman Bombs on ‘Jeopardy!’
Despite winning three Pulitzer Prizes, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman bombed on Jeopardy! Friday.
By the end of the show, he had amassed a pitiful $1,000 placing him third behind CNN’s Anderson Cooper and NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
Friedman must have been nervous for he missed his first two attempts.
With the category “21st Century Lingo,” the answer was, “In 2011, BusinessWeek said European government bonds were this ‘poisonous’ kind of debt.”
Friedman responded, “Sub-prime.” I guess he missed the clue in quotation marks “poisonous.”
The correct response of course was “toxic.”
In the same category moments later, the answer was, “It’s the ‘tiny’ term for a person who writes short posts about one’s personal life on Tumblr or Twitter.”
Once again, the word in quotations marks was the clue, and once again Friedman missed it.
“What is a tweeter?” he replied.
Of course, the answer was “micro-blogger.”
At the end of Double Jeopardy!, Cooper was in first with $15,600, Friedman in second with $8,400, and O’Donnell in third with $2,000.
The Final Jeopardy! category was Inventors, and the answer was, “The National Inventors Hall of Fame said his work ‘brought the south prosperity,’ but he was out of business within 5 years.”
Unfortunately, no one got the correct response of Eli Whitney, but as Friedman wagered $7,400, O’Donnell $500, and Cooper $1,201, the three time Pulitzer Prize winner came in last with only $1,000.
Nice job, Tom.

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Comments
I'm guessin' they won't be making THAT mistake again, huh?
Submitted by Annie Ashe Fields on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 5:31pm.
What was it my Catholic mother used to say?
"Pride goeth before the fall."
Well.....
Submitted by Jamson64 on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 5:32pm.
Chris Mathews and now Friedman? Funny how the most pompous fail.
Silly me,
Submitted by texasborngranny on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 11:18pm.
I didn't think anyone could do worse than Chris Matthews.
Then you never saw Wolf
Submitted by Max Entropy on Tue, 05/21/2013 - 10:34pm.
Then you never saw Wolf Blitzer play. He didn't even make it to final jeopardy. He finished with a negative $4600. Andy Richter smoked him winning $68,000 for St. Jude's hospitals.
Perhaps we'll see.......
Submitted by Herbster on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 12:07am.
Perhaps we'll see the Mathews family vs the Friedman family on Family Feud?
The Liberal Hits Just Keep on Coming
Submitted by Blonde on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 9:53am.
Oh how I wish The Once would play Jeopardy.
What is Obama for $-5,000,000,000,000.00, Alex?
Handy Reference Guide to Obama's Gaffes and Goofs ~ Currently Numbering 200 (and Counting)
But he is smarter than us.
Submitted by NeoKong on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 5:57pm.
His Pulitzers say so.
Pultizer, Schmulitzer
Submitted by CO2Maker on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 6:27pm.
They ain't no Nobel Peace Prize, which is where the real glory is.
Yes, of course...real glory
Submitted by gopcongress on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 9:30pm.
You can even pick one up for free when you buy an oil change from Horizon Auto.
http://www.dallasnews.com/incoming/article11599.ece/BINARY/w620x413/+An+...
"The news and truth are not the same thing." -Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER
Too bad ..
Submitted by almostacowboy on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 6:02pm.
No categories for Communists of the 21st Century or Rules for Radicals or Successful Totalitarian Regimes.
Score
Submitted by sallyfarrar on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 8:39pm.
They would have all been off the charts with that one.
What was really weird was that Friedman wagered $7400 when he knew he didn't have the answer.
You have to wager
Submitted by MichiganMan on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 11:49am.
You have to set your final wager before you know the answer. You only get the category for final Jeopardy and base your wager on your knowledge of that topic as well as the other player's scores (in case you have never watched the show).
are any of these episodes available online?
Submitted by mom_rox on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 6:10pm.
I have not seen the episode with Chris Wallace.
Well Alex.....
Submitted by Samaritan01 on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 6:11pm.
I'll take "Leftist Arrogance" for 5000 Alex!
This term, originally meant to describe a difficult Limbo game, was misapplied to describe a means by which Leftists succeed.
Cooper: Hiring closeted gays? Alex: Nope sorry, and by the way TMI dude, TMI.
Friedman: Freezing out conservative journalists?? Alex: No, sorry again...and by the way we'd never have an answer that obvious.
The Answer Is: Setting the bar low.
These clowns didn't know Eli Friggin Whitney?????
Submitted by djwolf12 on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 6:19pm.
I bet if Eli Whitney was a black man that had his idea and cotton gin invention stolen by the white southern devil for his own personal profit these liberals, marxists and socialists would know Eli Friggin Whitney. But of course, they believe that ONLY THE GOP started the KKK and are the RACISTS; No Democrats EVER WERE AND COULD NEVER BE in the history of Democrats!!!!!
Or,
Submitted by Dan Diego on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 7:46pm.
Or, he'd be fully subsidized and protected by the Govt and we'd still be using the original model by Congressional mandate.
Well, just like Matthews, I
Submitted by Antisocial-ism on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 6:30pm.
Well, just like Matthews, I think he was answering the questions he was hearing in his head. Cause these answers are almost non-sequiturs.
Alex: It is the first color in the rainbow.
Friedman/Matthews: What is the La Brea tar pits, Alex?
Alex: Ooh no.The answer is what is Red? Red, sorry. Seems you should have known that since you and Obama are Reds.
Loved it!
Submitted by BBallleaper on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 8:42pm.
Well done!
well
Submitted by caveman1313 on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 7:17pm.
i guess we now know that the Pulitzer isn't what it used to be
A bit unfair
Submitted by OBQuiet on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 7:49pm.
In a game where only the winner gets special rewards, making a wager that will let you win or come in last is the RIGHT thing to do.
Had he bet $1, we would have locked in seconds but that would have had NO special value over third.
He was just unlucky.
What Don'tcha know?
Submitted by BuffNBone on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 7:52pm.
It wasn't fair to ask these folks a simple question about the Bible.
The arrogance of these clowns
Submitted by d1carter on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 8:04pm.
The arrogance of these clowns who consider themselves to be our intellectual overlords is astounding...
I didn't think Friedman was stupid
Submitted by Tugboat Phil on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 9:27pm.
because of his Jeopardy performance. However, I do see his stupidity on display when I read his columns or hear him on TV.
Mmm...Kelly O'Donnell. I'd like to mess up her makeup.
Submitted by WhoIsJohnGalt on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 8:15pm.
As long as she kept quiet.
She might keep quiet during...,
Submitted by BBallleaper on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 8:46pm.
but afterwards you're in for a real headache with Nora. You could try fake snoring but it wouldn't shut her up as she critiqued your bedroom acumen. No, it may seem like a dream come true before, but afterwards is a liberal feminist nightmare that you'll never wake from!
Liberal Feminist Nightmare
Submitted by djwolf12 on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 9:47pm.
Sandra Fluck's face on condoms. Now THAT is a nightmare!
Wow, you sexist....
Submitted by Timothy H on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 3:59am.
I can't believe we have the gaul to complain that the left objectify our conservative women but when a (rare) hot liberal pundit gets in front of a camera, we go all caveman on her.......wait......oh, forget it. Your right. I'd like to mess up her make-up, too.
:)
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. -Albert Einstein
And for blonde:Some days it just doesn't pay to chew through the restraint. -Timothy H
Pulitzer Prize = renamed "Cracker Jack" prize.
Submitted by drsamherman on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 8:19pm.
The only thing that makes the Nobel Peace Prize more valuable is the fact that it's gold and comes with a million or so dollars as bribery for continued moonbattery.
You could say the same thing about Rhodes Scholarships
Submitted by djwolf12 on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 10:06pm.
Rachel Madcow was a Rhodes Scholar yet she is wrong on just about everything and has to apologize and retract her statements.
Totally agree, DJ.
Submitted by drsamherman on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 10:58pm.
With very few exceptions (Bobby Jindal was a Rhodie), the Rhodes Scholarship has become a coddling and training program for sedition and academic fraud.
If you look at the academic quality of the more recent recipients, Rage-hole Maddow displays such frightening stupidity about American constitutional law and is a historical revisionist of comic proportions. Others, like Jared Cohen, are now so deeply embedded in the State Department that undoing the damage done by people like him will take generations.
Bobby Jindal was a true exception. He must have been the one that slipped past the Communists at Oxford. Lord knows the political science and liberal arts faculties at the various colleges in Oxford are worse than the Bolsheviks and Islamists combined.
Eli Whitney. Or variations of
Submitted by Zippy on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 9:28pm.
Eli Whitney. Or variations of .... is on there a lot...........over the years.......
So, "the smartest man in the
Submitted by Chris Norman on Sat, 05/19/2012 - 9:34pm.
So, apparently, "the smartest man in the world" (just ask him) - isn't.
Quality of the queries
Submitted by kiwikit on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 5:51am.
seems to me to be more like those normal grade school children should be able to answer. I've not watched this show in years, or anything on the networks, but in
the olden days the Jeaopardy answer / questions were much, much tougher. These results are particularly telling when it's clear the whole show has been 'dumbed' down for these celebrity contestents. Or maybe the show has been dumbed down
generally since our fed schools don't teach anything anymore. In either case, it's rather pathetic.
The "celebrity" versions of Jeopardy
Submitted by MichiganMan on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 11:45am.
The "celebrity" versions of Jeopardy are dumbed down. The questions in the Teen Tournament are harder. The regular show has a good mix of tough questions as well as the easier questions.
I'm not surprised a raging
Submitted by ant on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 6:26am.
I'm not surprised a raging lib-hole like Friedbrain would miss the 'clues' given within the answer...it's what they do. They had 'clues' to the looming housing crisis, they have 'clues' to the looming entitlement and Social Security problem, they knew massive unemployment was coming, they know illegal immigration is a national problem, as is Federal debt, and on and on...they are given all these 'clues', and like Thommy Friedbrain, they ignore them and give wrong answers.
Well....
Submitted by StarAZ on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 1:24pm.
I am no Friedman fan, but I would have said "tweeter," too. It's his longer form "answers" in the form of columns (term of art) that worry me.
Anyone notice....
Submitted by fulldroolcup on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 1:30pm.
...that the Jeopardy Celebrity list was heavily weighted toward lefties? That Trebek used Biden and Moochelle to give clues?
Hmmmmm....
"I'll take "Political Leanings of the Host" for five hundred dollars, Alex."
They do get a lot of their
Submitted by Dan Diego on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 9:53pm.
They do get a lot of their "facts" from the NYT.
Dunce City
Submitted by cobokat on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 3:55pm.
Isn't is funny how stupid these libs really are?! Aren't these the same libs that branded Sarah Palin an idiot?! What amazes me is that most of these people really do live in a bubble and have no idea what is taking place in the real world.
Three mental eunuchs
Submitted by AA Cunningham on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 3:57pm.
For Anderson Cooper to accumulate that much scratch the categories must have been replete with questions about tea bagging, show tunes, decorating, fashion design and unhealthy lifestyle choices.
Jeopardy Losers
Submitted by Jim in Houston on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 4:15pm.
This must have been the battle of the mental midgets. Why did Friedman do so poorly , to hear him he is a genius and the rest of us are stupid little people? The problem with Tommy Boy and his libaturd friends is they don't really have a clue, so they would never recognize one.
I hear you
Submitted by Chicagoray40 on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 2:01am.
All these elitist lefties think they're the only people in the world with college degrees and frankly most of the college educated after 1985 could probably have a good case for getting their bills dismissed on grounds that what they received wasn't a college education but a leftist democratic voting activist training and nothing less. That's why they regurgitate back into education;
Never more than today has the phrase "Those who can DO and those who cannot TEACH." Been around all my life of 48 years that phrase, it must mean something ;) These are definitely gonna be the lost generations. : (
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. –Albert Einstein My Twitter
China
Submitted by TenSigh on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 8:09pm.
Maybe this is why he admires China so much. Alex Trabec would "disappear" after this episode if Friedman had his way...
Wolf Blitzer?
Submitted by Biff Ulysses on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 9:44pm.
Didn't Blitzer end up with something like NEGATIVE $4,000?
And none of these asshats got Eli Whitney? Hello? Inventor from the south?
Typical "highbrow" liberal dunces. Complacent, ignorant, uninformed --- and legends in their own minds.
lololol
Submitted by Chicagoray40 on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 1:56am.
The typical lefty probably owes them money when they leave this show!!!
And then they bail out the back door and yell while mounting their limo SUV as usual "send the bill to the conservative taxpayers" since we know most lefties avoid em by not paying them, or just denouncing their citizenship so they can bail on the country that made em rich with the highest taxes of which have been employed by the very jags they put in power
and then they leave us the mess to clean up for 40 years. If he wins that place needs to be torched and rebuilt
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. –Albert Einstein My Twitter
And this surprises whom?
Submitted by Chicagoray40 on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 1:51am.
The entire elite left have been schooled by the elite left who has left our nation so stupid they can't even walk and talk on a phone at the same time anymore. For instance, we've been using cell phones for 20 years now, but I never saw so many people walking into empty manhole covers and mall fountains and the likes in the entire time since the past 5.
WHY? Because the stupid used to not be able to afford cell phones. THAT'S WHY. Now they give them free to ghettoites who can't even spell the names of their states and cities..... Extrapolate that theory across society today and that goes right up to the white house and one can easily see in the name of PC and equality not deserved most of the time we now have been groomed to accept [and like it] the standards of the third world, because 30% of our population is third worlder's.
The president's a ''third worlder'' with an affirmative action education, and I know. My family's littered with Ivy league Cornell, Harvard, and HBS grads for last 100 years. In fact with my UVA education I'm the black sheep of my tribe! And I know from my experience and my siblings he doesn't make it ''to and through'' Columbia with that Occidental transfer of his without the hand outs, and that's why he- they're hiding his records. He's too stupid and frankly poor back then to have what he supposedly achieved and everyone knows it.
They've mostly been given degrees by indoctrination by professors that deem them adequately left, and when they're outside their little lefty worlds [where they know the answers to the debate questions because George Snufalufagus emails them to the lefties in their morning strategy sessions we all know they've had for years in that leftist media/dnc cabal] they flop like this guy.
In fact Dana Perino's kicked all their aazzzes so far. .
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. –Albert Einstein My Twitter
No surprise here
Submitted by DutchUncle on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 4:52am.
This shows that the people that are telling everyone else how to live and what to think know less then the general public about our country, our history and our People. Yet they are allowed to tell outright lies, cover up for criminals and politicians and misquote consvervatives at every turn. Maybe Term Limitation would be a good thing in the media also.....
Stupid Leftists
Submitted by Harley2002 on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 9:20am.
Look at how many of the so called brilliant Leftists just turn out to be dumb as rocks. Friedman, Mathews etc. Leftists are not that smart. That is why you always see them blabbing the same points at the same time. They wait for what they are supposed to think and say from their Jabba The Hut somewhere. Spew it for the required 3 to 7 days and then go back for the next thing they are supposed to think and say. War on Women, Racist Whites, Romney Is A Bully etc etc. Get them in a situation that they have to think on their feet and they are morons. LOL.
Useful Idiots doing the Communist's bidding
Submitted by aubreyfarmer on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 9:44am.
27). "I fear the Jewish banks with their craftiness and
tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of
America. And use it to systematically corrupt modern
civilization. The Jews will not hesitate to plunge the whole of
Christendom into wars and chaos that the earth should become
their inheritance." (Bismarck)
39). "Use the courts, use the judges, use the constitution
of the country, use its medical societies and its laws to
further our ends. Do not stint in your labor in this direction.
And when you have succeeded you will discover that you can now
effect your own legislation at will and you can, by careful
organization, by constant campaigns about the terrors of
society, by pretense as to your effectiveness, make the
capitalist himself, by his own appropriation, finance a large
portion of the quiet Communist conquest of that nation."
(Address of the Jew Laventria Beria, The Communist Textbook on
Psychopolitics, page 8).
they are all idiots
Submitted by CATHERINE1000 on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 12:28pm.
HEHEHE, THE LIBERALS LIKE THOMAS AND IDIOT MATTHEWS SHOW THAT THEY ARE DUMBER THAN 'palin', roflroflroflrofl.............THAT IS WHY THESE IDIOTS ARE GONE AFTER SELLING US their idiot obama................(that would be stupid - to you bush haters) roflroflrofl.......BARRY THE FIRST ARAB AMERICAN PRESIDENT HAS DESTROYED US (yep he has more Arab blood than one drop of african blood, ooops HE SCREWED YOU WHITE GUILT GUYS, SORRY)
catherine
http://www.examiner.com/republican-in-orlando/the-incredible-shrinking-p...A Sorry Trio
Submitted by Brookdalepark on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 3:03pm.
Actually, I am appalled that none of the three knew that Eli Whitney was the proper response. That was a pretty elementary question.