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Millionaire Jeopardy! Champ Ken Jennings Joins The 99 Percent

» 32 comments

Everyone remembers Ken Jennings, right? The Utah resident won 74 straight games of Jeopardy! in an unprecedented run seven years ago (has it been that long?). On his blog yesterday, Jennings, who pocketed $2,520,700 during his run, posted a photo of him holding up a printout of his hardships, in the same manner that people have been holding them up on the now-famous “We Are The 99%” Tumblr. It’s pure brilliance:

Remember 2004? A happier, more innocent time when a man could pull himself up by his bootstraps and, armed only with a humanities degree, support his family by winning 74 straight games of Jeopardy! in a row.
Then a huge multinational corporation poured millions of dollars into a computer that would demolish me on national TV, robbing me of my livelihood as a quiz show contestant.
Now I’m forced to hustle for a living as a “freelance writer,” like that’s a thing anymore.

I am the 99%.

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  • Anonymous

    What is clearly a joke , Alex ?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_M5V6VTQAVLARF7XXO47Z5OCZWM TangledThorns

    Can’t tell is trolling or serious…

  • Anonymous

    Of course it should be mentioned that he probably had to pay around have his winnings to state and federal taxes.

    So in that respect,and that since Jeopardy he’s probably not exactly bringing home the same kind of bucks,he could be part of the 99%.

  • Anonymous

    He’s poking someone (or something) in the eye.  Here’s a hint: It rhymes with Pocupy Ball Fleet

  • Liz

    Of course it’s a joke. Duh!
     
    For the record folks, being a “freelance writer” *is* certainly a thing. I’m not sure what the joke is there, but I make a good living at it.

  • Anonymous

    Ha!  Excellent.

  • http://www.facebook.com/tony.westover Tony Westover

    Hehehe, I see what he did there :-)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_A4OJ2F7ADXSD7OMEUUEQDQDZ2Y Dustin Baker

    He won’t be welcome at any drum circles anytime soon.  Ouch.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_A4OJ2F7ADXSD7OMEUUEQDQDZ2Y Dustin Baker

    It’s just too easy making fun of OWS.

  • Anonymous

    I’ll take sarcasm for $500 Alex.

  • Anonymous

    We  are supposed to feel sorry for this guy who figured he’d make his “living” playing games with other people’s money!  lol

    I don’t think too many people will be handing him a crying towel.

    Ever thought of working 9-5 Ken?

  • Anonymous

    That IBM Watson thingie is just a glorified Google. If it were required to submit to a delay equal to avg. human response time before getting to buzz, its biggest advantage would be nullified. If the Jeopardy questions were all formatted so that they took some human reasoning or abstracting rather than simple lookup in Google, it wouldn’t even win a buck.  Watson has zero semantic awareness, it’s all syntactic, in other words, it’s brainless, just memory. What kind of loon doesn’t know the difference between Canada and the U.S.?

  • Hmm

    Did “We are the 99%” jump the shark when it started posting suicide notes? (Bizarre)

  • Hmm

    (There appears to be one on the third or fourth page – “Michael”)

  • Anonymous

    The same could be said of those making fun of OWS. 

  • Leo Ladenson

    No irony detector, huh?

  • huerfano

    He should sue, like Driehaus.

  • http://cbullitt.wordpress.com/ SOYLENT GREEN
  • Anonymous

    Good man, that Ken Jennings.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_A4OJ2F7ADXSD7OMEUUEQDQDZ2Y Dustin Baker

    Says someone who can’t think of any way to make fun of me.

  • http://twitter.com/grimcity Neal Boyd

     Shush now, time for tea.

  • Guest

    Around “have” his winnings?  Took me a while to figure out you meant “half” of his winnings…

  • Anonymous

    Jennings is a progressive. Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid asked him to run for Orrin Hatch’s senate seat in 2004. http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979118406

    Apparently he’s just having a laugh at his own cause’s expense. Too bad. “I’ll take trivia geniuses that value ‘fairness’ over basic economics for $500, Alex.”

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QRLQWOM3YJSWJCPCTWDYONGFUM patrick

    wow…  pretty sad how many can’t see a JOKE right in from of them…  wow, what a pinhead.

  • http://twitter.com/Darr247 Darr Darr

    What happened to, “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords!” that he congratulated Watson with after getting his butt munched?

  • http://twitter.com/Darr247 Darr Darr

    “What kind of loon doesn’t know the difference between Canada and the U.S.?”

    Um, the typical US citizen, who calls himself “american” while ignoring the facts that mexico and canada are in north america, too, and that the true ‘native’ americans were all but wiped out by his illegal alien ancestors over the last 400 years.

  • NyahNyah

    Not only that, conservatives are DUMB, so there!
    –Mediaite

  • Jerry Baustian

    “his illegal alien ancestors”? What kind of loon are you?

  • Jerry Baustian

    That’s because the people making fun of OWS are smarter than the morons who _are_ OWS.

  • Ajahny23

    hahaha are you delusional or something awww my bad you are :)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TWK2YYJTTIDLZIVV7NKZM23Z6Q Tyler

    Thanks, for joining Ken, we need some smart one in our movement too.  

  • http://pozycz-teraz.pl Doradca Kredytów Online

    It’s trolling…

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