Subscribe via RSS Feed

Wolf

[ 35 ] January 27, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Appropriate given Wolf Blitzer’s increasingly embarrassing existence on CNN, watch him score what might be the lowest score ever on Celebrity Jeopardy.

Also, Andy Richter is a beast. Not that this is surprising.

Comments (35)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. firefall says:
    January 27, 2012 at 3:10 am

    Well he’s a journalist, he’s not required to know anything. Perhaps to be fair to him we should match him up against Tweety and The Moustache That Bloviates. I’m pretty sure he’d still outperform both Matthews and Friedman.

    Reply
    • R Johnston says:
      January 27, 2012 at 6:24 am

      Well he’s a journalist

      Wolf Blitzer is most emphatically not a journalist.

      Reply
      • Malaclypse says:
        January 27, 2012 at 6:39 am

        Are you sure “useless hackery” is not taught in journalism school?

        Reply
        • R Johnston says:
          January 27, 2012 at 6:53 am

          Wolf Blitzer got an F- in Useless Hackery as opposed to the Z- he got in actual journalism.

          Yes, he’s a worse journalist than he is a useless hack, but he’s not even remotely qualified to be either. Quibbling over the former point is ignoring the latter point.

          Reply
          • c u n d gulag says:
            January 27, 2012 at 7:20 am

            He’s no ‘wolf’ – at best, he’s a fucking Lap-dog

            To make the record clear – Lap-dog did get an A+ in “Simpering, Insipid, Obsequiousness,” and an A++ in “Ass-kissing the Right.”

            Everyone should have known he was in over his head when he asked, “Alex, can I buy a vowel?”

            Reply
        • Marek says:
          January 27, 2012 at 7:27 am

          “Useless Hackery” is a Primary Distribution Requirement at J-School.

          Reply
  2. Slocum says:
    January 27, 2012 at 6:27 am

    I could never understand how a milquetoast dweeb like him could call himself “Wolf Blitzer.” I think I’m changing my name to “Dash Riprock.”

    Reply
    • Hogan says:
      January 27, 2012 at 7:55 am

      Garth: Okay! Best name of a correspondent!

      Wayne: Brick Hugh, ABC. Geez, I wish that was my name! It sounds like James Bond, you know? “Hugh. Brick Hugh.” Congratulations! Good work, my friend! Okay, Worst Name. CNN Pentagon Correspondent, Wolf Blitzer? Shyeah, right!

      Garth: It’s so obvious the guy made it up for the war!

      Wayne: Yeah! I know, it’s like, “Hi, we now take you to our War Correspondent, Howitzer Explosion Guy.”

      Reply
    • Bart says:
      January 27, 2012 at 8:32 am

      One great name to come out of Castro’s revolution was Blas Roca. Even Wolfie could translate that.

      Reply
  3. Tom M says:
    January 27, 2012 at 6:45 am

    I was going to point out that speed on the buzzer is usually more important until I clicked through to see the examples of answers he got wrong.
    His job requires only that he be adept at reading a prompter. Perhaps he should have been able to bring the interns who do all the work with him on Jeopardy?

    Reply
  4. ploeg says:
    January 27, 2012 at 6:57 am

    It’s possible to be too smart by half when answering the question about Jesus’s birthplace, but Jerusalem, Wolf?

    Reply
  5. joe from Lowell says:
    January 27, 2012 at 9:18 am

    My favorite Wolf Blitzer story is from one of the 2008 Democratic debates. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards were on the stage, and Campbell Brown (who seems like someone who’d be really impressed by Wolf Blitzer’s intelligence) opens up by quoting something Obama said about some attack Hillary launched on the stump, and asking her what she thought about what he said. She takes the bait and hits him back, and then Brown asks Obama, “Senator Obama, what do you think about what Hillary just said about what you said about what she said?”

    Mission Accomplished, they bicker back and forth about who’s a jerk and who’s a jerk for calling the other a jerk – really compelling television, and so very important for our political process. But then, lo and behold, they manage to rise out of the muck and get into a brief back-and-forth about substantive issues in their health care plans.

    At which point, Wolf interrupts and says with a chuckle, “Now now, we’re going to have plenty of time tonight to talk about health care. Senator Edwards, what do you think about what Hillary said about what Obama said about what she said he said about what she said?”

    Thanks a lot, Wolf.

    Reply
    • Charlie Sweatpants says:
      January 27, 2012 at 11:53 am

      My favorite “Wolf Blitzer” (if that is his real name) moment came three or four days after Katrina made landfall, when New Orleans was falling apart and no one seemed to have any idea what was going on other than that the city was destroyed. I was having lunch in a bar that usually has its TVs on ESPN, but because of the storm they were on CNN. Blitzer was in his situation bunker looking at live scenes of flooding and people on their roofs begging for help and all the other terrible images. If there’s one thing everyone knows right now, it’s that New Orleans is in a long and lasting emergency.

      CNN has some guy on the ground at the New Orleans airport, frantically reporting on all the chaos there. Blitzer, after doing that “look serious, nod and mumble” thing anchors do when field reporters are talking, asks the guy – who has just spent a minute reporting that New Orleans is now essentially an anarchic disaster zone – if tourist flights will be starting again that weekend.

      The reporter is stunned into silence. He didn’t know how to respond. Obviously he doesn’t want to embarrass Blitzer, but how are you supposed to reply to that? It’d be like reporting the Kennedy assassination and then being asked about Jackie’s shoes. Eventually he says something like, “Uh, Wolf, right now the focus is on relief.”

      Wolf Blitzer may have been the only person in the country more clueless about Katrina that Bush the Younger. That’s how empty his suit is.

      Reply
      • Slocum says:
        January 27, 2012 at 12:13 pm

        From Wikipedia: “In writing for several Israeli newspapers in Washington, Blitzer has used the names Zev Blitzer and Zev Barak.”

        Why would he do that? Is Zev Hebrew for Wolf?

        Reply
  6. Njorl says:
    January 27, 2012 at 9:54 am

    Comedians usually do best on celebrity Jeopardy, with “serious journalists” doing the worst. I think Bob Costas is the only non-comedian I ever saw on the show who was the least bit impressive.

    Blitzer was even more embarrassing than Anderson Cooper.

    Reply
  7. JerBL says:
    January 27, 2012 at 10:29 am

    I remember a few years ago switching past CNN and watching Blitzer interview Jerry Falwell. I guess there had been a bunch of natural disasters shortly before, and so the question they were discussing was, “Are we seeing signs of the Apocalypse?”

    Blitzer asked Falwell the question, and Falwell responded with, “Well, let’s not be hasty. People have predicted the end of the world before and been wrong”.

    When Jerry Falwell is interviewed on a topic at the heart of religious quackery, and is the voice of reason, this is a very bad sign indeed.

    Reply
  8. LKS says:
    January 27, 2012 at 11:55 am

    On the Jesus question…I probably would have gotten it wrong, too, because I would have had to think about it, and you’re not given time to think on Jeopardy. And frankly, I don’t give a fuck where religious nutcases with messiah complexes happened to pop into this world.

    However, I haven’t lived in Israel, I don’t speak fluent Hebrew, and I didn’t cover the Middle East for two decades before going to CNN. I suppose it’s possible to do all these things without having any clue where Jesus was born, but I think you’d have to work at remaining that ignorant under those conditions. After all, Israel is only slightly larger than a postage stamp, and it’s not as if the geopolitical implications of it being the birthplace of Crosstianity never come up in the conversation there.

    Reply
    • catclub says:
      January 27, 2012 at 12:02 pm

      Anyone who has listened to Christmas carols should know where Jesus was born.

      But wouldn’t ‘Palestine!’ be a great answer?

      And true at the time.

      Reply
      • Bill Murray says:
        January 27, 2012 at 1:06 pm

        I think the old Bethlehem Steel plant in Pittsburgh would have been an excellent answer

        Reply
        • Njorl says:
          January 27, 2012 at 1:31 pm

          Driving directions from Nazareth to Bethlehem

          Nazareth, PA

          1. Head south on S Broad St toward E Walnut St
          0.5 mi
          2. Turn right onto Easton Rd
          0.2 mi
          3. Turn left onto PA-191 S/Nazareth Bethlehem Pike
          Continue to follow Nazareth Bethlehem Pike
          4.8 mi
          4. Continue onto Linden St
          3.2 mi

          Bethlehem, PA

          Reply
  9. RP says:
    January 27, 2012 at 1:10 pm

    When I was on Jeopardy a couple of years ago, the ever-patient contestant handlers got all of us nervous geeks to loosen up by telling us that there’s no way we could ever be as bad as the celebrities.

    Reply
  10. Colin Day says:
    January 27, 2012 at 6:13 pm

    Hey, it’s not as though the US Secretary of Education would lose to Lenny from Laverne and Shirley.

    Oh, wait

    here

    Reply
  11. kradek says:
    January 27, 2012 at 7:09 pm

    An even lower Wolf moment:”So poor, so black”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sfo32rlkiE

    Reply
  12. Mike Schilling says:
    January 27, 2012 at 8:07 pm

    Wolf just stood up to Newt Gingrich. This is a sign of the apocalypse. His usual response to having his feelings hurt by a politician is this.

    Reply

Leave a Reply




If you want a picture to show with your comment, go get a Gravatar.

  • blogroll

  • Brad Delong
  • Crooked Timber
  • Daily Kos
  • Danger Room
  • Eschaton
  • Ezra Klein
  • Feministe
  • Talking Points Memo
  • Feministing
  • Glenn Greenwald
  • Juan Cole
  • Monkey Cage

    • Switch to our mobile site