Alex Trebek was the God of Knowledge
It’s the mid-1990s. I can’t be more than three or four years old. I’m in a modest condo in a senior living community in Southbury, Connecticut. Sitting in my Yia-Yia’s lap, I’m warm and safe, eyes fixed on the TV with that deep clue-background blue dominating the smallish, square glass screen.
My impressionable ears can’t get enough of the cheery theme music. The electronic sound effects that reveal the clue or signal that an answer (phrased in the form of a question, always) has not been offered up in time impress themselves in my young brain too.
Anchoring it all is the friendly authority of Alex Trebek’s voice. His big glasses, greying curly hair and stout mustache affect the look of a teacher with the patient, immaculate delivery of every clue to match.
At this age, the clues come and go too fast for me to shout a correct answer at the TV, but hearing my grandmother (as well, at times, as my mother and father) play along trains me over time.
When I start going to school, maps and geography fascinate me. Eventually, my attention sharpens and I squeal when categories like “State Capitals” and “Lakes & Rivers” pop up at the beginnings of rounds. So the adults back off and give me the opportunity to feel the positive-reinforcement rush of shouting “Annapolis!” and then hearing a contestant say it, followed by the increase to their score.
The biggest thrill comes when I shout “Bismarck!” but the contestant on the TV rings in with “Pierre” or another incorrect city. In those formative moments, I realize I’m in possession of knowledge that an adult — one smart enough to be on TV, no less — is not. It’s as powerful a feeling as a little kid can have.
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It’s fall of 2007. I’m a college freshman, away from my family for the first time. But on the strength of a strong academic record, I’m at a university filled with people who also enjoy knowing things. One of them is my friend Jamie, himself raised on Jeopardy! in San Antonio.
We have a standing appointment most weeknights at 7:30 pm to intrude on someone’s room (neither of ours has a TV) to watch the show. We bring scraps of paper to keep track of our own correct answers. Whoever shouts it out first gets the tick mark, but we are lax with what constitutes a tie. Our dorm hall neighbors who aren’t big trivia fans sometimes roll their eyes at our urgency to find a viewing spot when the usual haunts are unavailable because someone’s cramming for an exam, watching a football game or getting laid. But when someone at last lets us in, they play along, too, often surprising themselves and us when some aspect of their own life experience gives them answers that neither of us have. After a childhood where my head for trivia has sometimes cast me outside my main social peer group, it now helps bind me closer to a new community.
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At the center of these rituals and memories, without fail, was Alex Trebek. Jeopardy! contestants are by definition very smart, but Alex was omniscient and omnipresent. He was the one with all the answers, the God of Knowledge for whose favor every night’s trio of competitors vied, along with millions of viewers at home, on their grandmothers’ laps and in college dorms.
Pancreatic cancer laid him low on Sunday at the age of 80. Unlike the ones that would propel his nightly charges towards millions of dollars, these facts leave us cold and sad, rather than self-satisfied and empowered.
But here’s another fact: gods don’t really die. Over more than three and a half decades in his seat of authority over matters of vocabulary, history, science, math, music, current events and the occasional “Stupid Answers,” Alex Trebek came to symbolize the potential of knowledge not just to net an individual a financial reward, but to build a community of people who fully feel the satisfaction that a command of facts brings and, like generations before them, will pass that love forward.
One might forgive the God of Knowledge for being the ultimate know-it-all, full of the sneering self-satisfaction the epithet implies. But Alex was exactly the opposite. With a virtually unimpeachable reputation for geniality, he transcended the criteria on which modern celebrity is built: namely, a penchant for constant attention. His illness was known for much of the last year, but he passed away almost surreptitiously. Outside of Jeopardy!, he did the odd insurance ad, but he always seemed to be content in his main role in public life. One of the last figures of the American monoculture, his abiding kindness grew more subversive over time as so many popular figures have built their own celebrity on controversy, conflict, bravado and downright meanness.
This is where his successor’s most serious challenge lies: not just in making knowledge lucrative, but kind. It is holy work, and it begins now.
