A Champion’s Tale

They encircled him, dressed in their former Jeopardy! contestants’ robes. They pointed their index finger at him and began to chant: Sinner, sinner, sinner.

They possessed a breadth of knowledge, state capitals and mountain ranges, song lyrics and literary references. And they believed with all their heart and soul that they were the good ones, which made their cause not merely just, but beyond reproach.

They had seen a contestant on that night’s show, a big white guy with a red tie, Kelly Donohue, make an odd gesture with three fingers of his right hand. “Based on the evidence we’ve seen being bandied about elsewhere, there is a real possibility he was giving either a white power or a Three Percenter hand gesture,” wrote one moderator, a middle-school teacher who was on the show about five years ago, according to screenshots provided by another group member. And though “we can’t know his intent,” he continued, “we’re not here to provide safe harbor for white supremacists.”

Snopes said no, it wasn’t a white supremacist hand signal. It was just him signaling his third win, as if they would believe this apologist.

But he used his pointer & middle for “1” and “2”… No one does this and then changes to this hand formation to count “3”.

No one.

Maybe not exactly “no one,” but that wasn’t the point. Did he? Did Donahue? They saw it with their own eyes. How could there possibly be any doubt?

Mr. Donohue had tried to explain himself after the episode aired and accusations of covert white supremacy began turning up on his personal Facebook page. “That’s a 3. No more. No less,” he wrote. “There wasn’t a hidden agenda or any malice behind it.”

Exactly what one would expect a white supremacist engaging in secret hand signals to say.

His fellow former contestants responded harshly in their letter to his attempt to explain himself. “Most problematic to us as a contestant community is the fact that Kelly has not publicly apologized for the ramifications of the gesture he made,” they wrote. That prompted him to “reject and condemn white supremacy” in a second statement.

Sinner. Sinner. Sinner. TESTIFY!

If something has been misconstrued, an apology and a total disavowal of any connection to white supremacist doctrines is called for. We saw that gesture air on television. We are among the public it affected, and we are a diverse group of people. People of color, religious minorities, and other marginalized groups already live in a United States and a Canada that have structural and institutional racism, sexism, antisemitism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia embedded into their history and function. These people deal with microaggressions nearly every day of their lives, through words, actions, and assumptions that remind them on a constant basis that they are not the default, they are not the mainstream, they are not “real citizens.” And that is hard enough. That is enough for them to bear and enough for us to keep trying to recognize, to address, and to fight.

Donahue issued a statement condemning white supremacy which, to no one’s surprise, made no difference whatsoever. A letter was also sent to that bastion of hatred, the Anti-Defamation League calling for condemnation.

Then, two weeks later, the group finally heard back from the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish civil rights group that is usually quick to call out anything with the faintest smell of bigotry.

“We have reviewed the tape and it looks like he is simply holding up three fingers when they say he is a three-time champion. We do not interpret his hand signal to be indicative of any ideology. However, we are grateful to you for raising your concern, and please do not hesitate to contact us in the future should the need arise.”

Rather than calm the perpetually outraged, this evoked yet further hysteria.

The A.D.L.’s response provoked fury among former contestants who had signed the letter.

“Is anyone else feeling gaslit?” asked one two-time champion, according to the screenshots. “We saw it. We know we did. But a lot of people (including the goddamned ADL) are telling us we didn’t. That’s some classic gaslighting.”

Apparently, knowing the phylum of algae does not enable one to engage in rational synthesis. If you see something, which you obviously saw just as everyone else can see it in the still image that is available for all to see, does that mean your interpretation of what it means is either valid or unassailable? The hip term “gaslighting” means “manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.” Apparently, being wrong isn’t a possibility for the 595 former Jeopardy! contestants to entertain, leaving their sanity exposed as dubious.

Social media turns just about everything into a kind of team sport, including analyzing the ills of social media. But we’re all easy to fool when a photograph, say, confirms what we already thought, and all our friends are sharing it. And the people who benefit from allowing instinct to stand in for evidence were, in the “Jeopardy!” case, the exact people the letter signers hated most, the trolls who first tried to turn a different innocuous hand gesture into a racist symbol, and now have us all seeing secret Nazi code on prime-time television.

From the perspective of the outraged contestants, they are not only believers in their own  superior intelligence, but the fact that they are on the side of goodness, righteousness, history. When they condemn conduct for being white supremacist, which is so obviously wrong as to provide a near-perfect justification for any consequence that follows, it doesn’t matter whether it is, in fact, or merely appears that way to people searching for things to be outraged about. Concerns about intent, or even fact, are so very white as they ignore the impact on others, mostly the allies of the marginalized who feel the duty to destroy for the sake of others.

Kelly Donahue was a guy on Jeopardy! who won a few games.

As people whose lives have been largely beneficially impacted by this show and its community, we really hope to see a statement and a disavowal of both of this week’s events, and we would like to see “Jeopardy!” address Kelly’s behavior.

Jeopardy! did. They gave him over $80 thousand dollars. Now his fellow contestants demand he be put on the wall.

40 thoughts on “A Champion’s Tale

  1. Lee Keller King

    As the inimitable Dr Richard Feynman once said:

    “Never confuse education with intelligence or knowledge with wisdom.
    “They are not the same!”

  2. Paleo

    “If something has been misconstrued, an apology…is called for”.

    Lol. We made a mistake so you must apologize to us for our mistake. In the real world that’s not how it works.

    Among all of the woke social media stupidity, it’s hard to identify anything more stupid than than turning the ok sign into a symbol of white supremacy. Those folks are a lot of things, but intelligent ain’t one of those things.

    1. SHG Post author

      In some not insignificant parts of “the real world,” that’s very much how it’s working these days.

      1. Charles

        Including at the Times: “The letter’s main co-authors asked not to be named because they feared harassment on social media.”

  3. Elpey P.

    “Most problematic to us as a contestant community is the fact that Kelly has not publicly apologized for the ramifications of the gesture he made.”

    So these people are reactionary authoritarians at heart, and will even righteously announce it. Their biggest stated concern is judging and punishing the individual – even if they admit it may be for their own projections. For people who preach about being on the right side of history, they’re pretty bad at seeing the historical pattern they fit into.

  4. Quinn Martindale

    If the ADL of all groups doesn’t think something is a hate symbol, it’s pretty obvious it’s not actually a hate symbol.

    1. SHG Post author

      Not everyone defers to the ADL’s authority, regardless of outcome. But its bias is clear.

    2. Bryan Burroughs

      Look, nobody listens to the ADL. They’re just a bunch of dirty… heeeeeeey nooooow…..

      Seriously, they had to switch it to “gaslighting” yo keep from going there.

  5. miketrials

    Nope. It’s not possible folks are as mind-bendingly stupid and narcissistic as the assemblage of Jeopardy champions are described. And then to double down on “ramifications?” Obviously we must question the truth of this. It seems most likely that Scott must have made it up. Yup, that’s it. I call on Scott to demonstrate to our satisfaction that he didn’t make this up, and then apologize for the apparently made-up aspects of this conduct he brought to our attention, even if it was not made up.

  6. Bear

    I’ve got a single finger for the perpetually outraged but it’s not the “pointer” one.

    1. Kurt

      I believe what you are referring to was known in Roman times as the digitus impudicus.

      They’re not worth even that much.

      Kurt

  7. Drew Conlin

    I can’t wait for a similar situation to arise in which the subject ( Donahue) with zero ambiguity says you all are crazy and you can kiss my a%#!!! Not as a means of arguing with them but to acknowledge to the rest of us that this is lunacy and we all know it.

  8. B. McLeod

    The “contestant community.” What a sad, sad identity.
    I suppose they all have framed photos of their moments on the show.

    1. Jeff Davidson

      I’m a former Jeopardy! contestant, although not a part of any organized community. Still, I don’t see what’s sad about identifying as a part of the contestant community. You, and Jake, and JB, and many others are a part of the SJ commenting community. Sometimes some of you, including the esteemed host, make it clear that not only are you on the inside of this community, but that there are community norms and mores that are violated at the risk of the uninitiated. That’s neither sad nor unreasonable.

      1. SHG Post author

        I don’t see any issue with contestants sharing a FB group either. Of all the issues here, that’s not one of them.

      2. Charles

        Jeff, not naming any names, but at least one of us is here only because the ABA mods kicked them out.

        1. B. McLeod

          But of course, everyone in the world is blocked from commenting on the ABA site since April of 2019, when the Board of Editors had to shut it down in the face of the staff’s monumental incompetence. For those who missed the final days of the ABA comment boards, they had become an open sewer of incivility. The moderators were leaving up all manner of personal attacks, obscenities, and even death threats, so long as they were posted by rabid leftists.

  9. Hunting Guy

    Benjamin Jowett.

    “Never regret, never explain, never apologize. Get it over with and let them howl.”

  10. Angrychiatty

    His evil white supremacist plan all along was to win three in a row so he could make it *look* like it was just the number three he was holding up. Getting the jeopardy answers correct was just a means to an end. I saw right through that plan. Surprised none of you recognized it.

    1. PseudonymousKid

      I too am disappointed Pops missed the obvious plot. The guy must have studied so hard just to be able to commit a hate crime on national television. Think of how evil he must be. This show was supposed to be my safe space but this three-time champ ruined it.

      Really, it’s the contestants who bravely signed on to that stupid letter who are threatening my safe space where all that matters is a contestant’s ability to hit the buzzer before the others, answer questions correctly, and make smart wagers when required.

  11. Rick Smith

    If anybody is doing any gaslighting here, it’s the people trying to convince Donahue that he intended his gesture to mean anything other than what he intended it to.

      1. Jeffrey

        I think the term “gaslighting” was fine to describe the form of psychological manipulation, when it was used in moderation and accurately. But, like so many words, it has become overused, untethered, and lost its meaning over the last several years.

        As for this Jeopardy! scenario, just when I think this subset of people can’t become any more deranged, they once again leap beyond expectations.

      2. cthulhu

        I much prefer “chickenshit bullying by puffed-up aggrieved assholes whose sell-by date has long since expired.” What’s a few more syllables in the name of accuracy?

        The correct response to this kind of aggravation is “Fuck off, slaver.”

        You’re welcome.

    1. Rengit

      Much like other psychology, sociology, and social science ideas that escaped the lab and went on to wreak havoc in the wild, gaslighting was a semi-useful concept to describe a very specific phenomenon occurring in intimate partner violence, child abuse, and extremely abusive family relationships; too bad once it broke free it turned quickly into “you disagree with me or have a different opinion/ interpretation than me, therefore you’re gaslighting me” after Tumblr and Twitter got ahold of it.

  12. Curtis

    I really hate this BS. I had a friend who son’s team won the state championship in soccer. The team posed in front on the school sign and two of boys did the “OK” symbol. My friend posted the picture on Facebook in celebration. We all liked the photo and made congratulatory comments.

    But one asshat SJW had to say the boys were racist for the symbol. My friend quickly replaced the picture with one without the gesture. Ms. Asshat then asked “What are you trying to hide?” My friend remove all her son’s celebration photo.

    A photo celebrating hard work and accomplishment was turned into crap. The asshat knew half the kids on the team and knew they weren’t racist. Not surprisingly, half the team was Hispanic including one of the people making the OK symbol. But Ms. Asshat had to show her purity.

    1. Rengit

      The trouble is that there’s no downside to Ms. Asshat making the accusation, it’s cost-free with only potential upside because nothing will happen to her socially, economically, or professionally. She’s wildly wrong? She’s just zealous and that dedicated to fighting racism, you can’t possibly hold anything against her for that, right? You become angry at her and try to shun her? Then you’re attacking a person who is just trying to tackle racism, how can we overcome racism if the people at the frontlines of fighting racism are attacked for doing so?

      As there are no effective negative consequences to accusations of racism aimed at everyone and everything, we don’t look to be approaching any end to our present madness.

  13. Dan J

    This has got to be the stupidest “controversy” in the last 5 years, and that is saying something.

    The lack of self-awareness by the guy to claim we are all gaslighting him is just truly unbelievable. How do you have a discourse with that level of insanity?

  14. Paleo

    Ok, this seriously just happened. The wife and I are watching our grandson today. At lunch he started talking about how big he is now (he recently turned 3). My wife says “you are big because you’re 3 now” and he says “yep” and shows us his age. Using exactly the same hand configuration as the Jeopardy guy.

    What should I do here? Just beat him? Anybody got an age appropriate re-education camp I can take him to?

  15. Kirk A Taylor

    I don’t see how the racist editors are getting away scott free.
    Those racists were clearly in collusion with Donahue to make sure his racist gesture aired.

  16. Alex S.

    The problem must have been that Donohue didn’t phrase his condemnation of white supremacy in the form of a question.

  17. Keith Lynch

    Am I the only one reminded of the movie Inglourious Basterds? In that movie, a man is murdered because he signals the number three with his fingers in the “wrong” way. Murdered by literal Nazis.

  18. Francis Ney

    The appropriate response is two words: One I can’t say here, the other is “you.” Further proceedings should be answered with a charge of disturbing the peace.

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