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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.”
Left Coast Dan
May 20th, 2012
I watched the last half – questions are definitely easier than normal. I wasn’t impressed by any of them, and really surprised that nobody got the final correctly.
John F.
May 20th, 2012
So, “The World Is Flat”, Thomas Friedman? I think it’s your head.
MAJMike
May 20th, 2012
Yep. The Lib-Cong got all the smart ones.
Mary
May 20th, 2012
It’s only because the questions weren’t in Chinese!!!!