Rant #2,528: I Lost On Jeopardy

 

“Joe Biden.”

 
“Who is the 46th president of the United States?”
 
Yes, I gave the answer before the question, to honor Alex Trebek, who died yesterday of cancer at 80 years old.
 
I guess I can handle two stories at once—I could say “kill two birds with one stone,” but that would be in bad taste—when talking about both the president-elect and Trebek in one mouthful.
 
It’s as easy as “1-2-3”—and by doing that, I can squeeze in the death of singer Len Barry, who also passed away this weekend, He died at age 78, and cancer got him too.
 
Let’s first sequeway into a different type of cancer, something that is permeating our country right now.
 
It is clear that we are a split country, at least based on the election results.
 
Notice that I did not say “Election Day,” because that day, a day that should be a sacred one, in particular when we vote as a nation for president, has been watered down so much with early voting and mail-in voting that it simply does not resonate anymore.
 
I am not arguing the election results. Joe Biden is our new president and Kamala Harris is our new vice president.
 
President Trump has every right to ask for recounts in certain states that are very close in the polling. Even former President Bush—not a staunch ally of the president—said that yesterday, even though his message of congratulations to Biden were truncated by most news sources to omit that part of his message—another story for another time.
 
I do agree with the president that mail-in ballots present problems that actual voting-at-the-polling-place voting does not, and with so many people mailing in their ballots this year under the umbrella of safety from the coronavirus, you would have to say that the potential problems would manifest themselves many times the normal amount, when mail-ins are just a drop in the bucket.
 
But unless the president can come up with substantial miscarriages of justice related ot millions of these ballots, I can’t see how he has a leg to stand on by fighting this tooth and nail like he is doing. Perhaps he and his lawyers know more about this, and are not letting their smoking guns to shoot out in the open, but as it stands, the election is over and done with.
 
Was there subterfuge? Probably.
 
Is subterfuge illegal? No, it isn’t.
 
What we need, and quite honestly, what the president should be fighting for in his final days in office, are standardized rules and regulations related to these ballots.
 
This is a national election, not a local one, and the rules and regulations for when mail-ins should be valid should be standardized, with one rule governing the 50 states in the union.
 
You cannot have one state where these ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day, another state where they can be postmarked days after … I mean, has anyone reading this used a postage machine? I have, and if I had a mail-inn ballot, I could still not send it in, but put postage on it today, simply backsliding the date to Election Day. I cannot tell you how many times I did similar things using a postage machine during some of the jobs that I had where I had to use such a machine. It is so easy to do.
 
I am not saying people did this en masse, but mail-ins are always going to be suspect for one reason or another.
 
How many people voted twice, mailing in a ballot and then voting in their polling place? Don’t tell me that it doesn’t happen, and somehow get through the checks and balances we have to supposedly prevent such skullduggery.
 
How many dead people voted this way? I will tell you that if we had a mail-inn ballot for my father as far back as July and early August, he probably would have voted in this year’s election, as he was still cognizant back then. even though his condition deteriorated by mid-August, and he passed away in September. As far out of left field as this sounds—we never even considered it—how many other deceased people still on the roles somehow voted in this election?
 
With all of these possible faults, unless President Trump and his legal team can come up with widespread abuse of mail-in voting—and I do mean widespread abuse—this election is over.
 
And I don’t think he can do it, unless he pulls a major rabbit out of his hat … and I would not put it passed him to do so, but no, I don’t think he can do it.
 
So congratulations to the president-elect and the vice president-elect, and let’s move on from this nonsense to some sense of normalcy in a very un-normal period in our history.

 
As far as Alex Trebek, I was personally not a great viewer of his version of “Jeopardy.” I was a fan of the show in its earliest incarnation, with Art Fleming, years back.
 
I thought that the current version was more a trivia game than a knowledge game, but that had nothing to do with Trebek, who was clearly the last of the great game show hosts, seemingly put on this planet to host such shows and to do nothing else.
 
But Trebek was affable, very self denigrating in a humorous way, and this Canadian became as American as apple pie, as his hosting duties on “Jeopardy”—and on countless other lesser game shows—made him a household name.
 
His “Jeopardy” shows will continue on for the remainder of the year, and his legacy is out in the open with constant reruns of his work on various stations, including the Buzzr channel.
 
Who will succeed him as the host of “Jeopardy?”
 
When asked this question, and with his usual tongue firmly planted in his cheek, he replied “Betty White.”

 
Len Barry was not a household name, but if you grew up during the 1960s, his voice was sort of a household voice on the radio.
 
He was the lead singer of the Dovells, a Philadelphia vocal group that put out numerous hits during the pre-Beatles 1960s, including one of my favorites, “You Can’t Sit Down.”
 
As the lead singer of that group, Barry kind of pre-dated the advent of bubblegum music a few years later with his vocals on the Dovells’ hits, and this carried on when he left the group and embarked on a solo career, with his breakout hit “1-2-3,” a song which definitely opened the door for songs like “1-2-3 Red Light” and “Indian Giver” and “Yummy Yummy Yummy” and other songs of that ilk.
 
His fame was fleeting, but he was one of the truly unsung voices of the 1960s, and he left a legacy of fine music.
 
So there, I have killed three birds with one stone with today’s Rant.
 
“The election. Alex Trebek. Len Barry.”
 
“What are stories that we needed to talk about today?”
 
Correct!
 
“Potent Potables for $100, please.”