Re: Misrepresentations in the Post article

• From: darwins_bulldog1138 <darwins_bulldog1138_at_darwins_bulldog1138.yahoo.invalid>
• Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 17:30:40 -0000
• Message-ID: <ck1a40+3lvh_at_...>

> Given what I have been told about certain quiz show contestants 
> receiving death threats for their success, I can tell you too well 
> who is "dismayed" about such success.

Fair enough. I made a post myself about a woman who sent some barely
coherent letter to my local paper expressing some fairly obvious
jealousy and badly reasoned contempt for Ken, so I know those people
exist.

The question remains: What do these people have to do with quizbowl?
Why were those who value the "intellectual" side of quizbowl
(article's word) singled out as holding such a view? Where does
"jealousy" seep in? Who, exactly, is looking at the success of Ken
Jennings and comparing him to a hack writer or saying that he
shouldn't be succeeding because he's not an elite circuit player
according to someone's standard? Either someone talking to the
reporter made this up out of whole cloth, or the reporter did, because
not a single person has ever posted any message to that effect on this
board or any other. This is the passage:

>>To the quiz bowlers, though, playing is as much an art as a science,
and Robert Hentzel sees "some division" in the community between those
who cherish the game as a purely intellectual endeavor and those who
welcome its intersection with the popular mainstream. Jealousy also
seeps in.

"Certainly there is a segment of the community dismayed by game shows
and the questions they ask and that Ken Jennings or Kevin Olmstead,
whom they don't perceive as the best quiz bowlers or the most
knowledgeable, are rewarded so much," Hentzel said. "It's like authors
of serious fiction looking at J.K. Rowling and saying, this isn't
fair, these aren't great books, yet she's richer than the Queen of
England."<<