Every day in May became more and more tiresome as professional gambler and trivia savant James Holzhauer kept on winning.
The novelty of his strategy (choose the most expensive clues first, and bet high on Daily Doubles) wore off. So did the wonder at how often he seemed to know the answer to so many pointless questions. (He mentioned that he boned up by reading children's books that offered succinct explanations of science, history, geography, etc).
After a while, it was just irritating to see that cheesy tooth-baring smile of victory.
It seems there's no shortage of annoying Jeopardy champions. Most of them get on the nerves of fans because they mug for the camera or do idiotic mime gestures, or say smug things during the brief interview moment with Trebek each time. James simply kept winning, and the more he won, breaking records for most money won in a single game and then zooming past a million bucks, the more some viewers rolled their eyes and wished him gone.
As Yankees haters can tell you, NOBODY likes to see a winner keep winning and winning.
The recent loss by heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua on June 1st, was greeted with cheers by many who simply didn't like a nice, smiling guy having a perfect winning record.
It’s an irony that the Internet, which does "spoilers" for every movie, and regularly leaks nude images of famous stars, and was the birthplace for Wikileaks, had NOBODY spilling the beans on James Holzhauer.
Why couldn't anyone tell fans when it was safe to watch JEOPARDY again and NOT see GOMER winning and smirking?
Once Holzhauer surged past a million bucks, heading for TWO million and possibly breaking the Ken Jennings record of about 2.5 million, a few articles in the media began to appear:
WHY HASN'T THERE BEEN IN A LEAK ON WHEN HE LOSES??
Today's game, his LOSS, June 3rd, was actually recorded back on March 12th.
The leak didn't happen until this weekend, when TV stations around the country got the new weeks' worth of tapes and station employees could view them all.
Hundreds of people knew what had happened back on March 12th, including the staff and the studio audience.
Jeopardy producers would not reveal what measures were taken to keep the news secret, and lamely suggested that the studio audience, consisting of fans, loved the game too much to ruin it. Nobody in the audience mentioned that James lost...to anyone? Not to some blabbermouth Lucy?
Here's the reason why there was no leak.
Blab the news on social media, and all you'd get is the murderous hatred of die-hard Jeopardy fans.
Steal a celebrity's nude images and you can make money. People sell copies in eBay's secret "adults only" section, of Jennifer Lawrence's wet-faced cellphone porn images and Britney Spears exit from a limo sans underwear, and hundreds of Photoshop fakes. There are websites that do nothing but show such images and make a fortune in banner ads.
As for Assange, he wasn't Robin Hood. Fame and fortune was why he made sure to steal American secrets, and not risk being poisoned by Putin for giving away anything on Russia. Unlike the guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers, Assange made it his business, literally. He made himself fearsome and a superstar and made Wikileaks a thriving enterprise.
So, the real reason the Holzhauer story wasn't liked is: MONEY.
As James Holzhauer grew closer and closer to two and a half million, and breaking the Ken Jennings record…telling the world if he beat Jennings' record or not wasn’t worth a dime.
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