Of all the “Jeopardy!” guest hosts so far — aside from Ken Jennings — Buzzy Cohen has been the best. He’s the guy currently handling the two-week Tournament Of Champions, an event he knows well, having won it in 2017. Cohen brings energy and an upbeat personality to the proceedings, unlike Bill Whitaker, Aaron Rodgers, and some of the others, who handled the technical aspects of the job but didn’t have that extra something. Plus, Cohen is only 36, which puts him in the target demographic for the kind of host Sony should want, in that he could take on the gig and hold it for many, many years (as Alex Trebek did).
More than a decade ago, I wrote about the late Francene Cucinello, my friend who hosted a very successful midday talk show on WHAS/Louisville. She was there during the Great Recession (2008-10), and used her platform to help people find work by turning her Friday shows into radio want ads, where employers called in and talked about available jobs that her listeners could apply for. The phones lit up immediately, and stayed lit. In just a few months, she helped 500 unemployed people find new full-time jobs. It’s a concept that could easily be adapted to our current circumstances, when so many people are still out of work because of the effect the pandemic had on the economy. It would have an extra impact in states like Missouri, where the governor is ending the extra $300/week stimulus payments in a few weeks.
Speaking of business problems, I was shocked when I saw that a funeral parlor in our area had gone out of business. That seemed like an industry that would always have a steady flow of customers, because even though the end of life can be postponed by medical advances, none of us can avoid death. My wife thinks the funeral home had been family-owned for a long time, and perhaps the next generation had no desire to carry it forward once the then-owners wanted to retire. I’d have thought one of the regional or national mortuary chains would have swooped in, but none did, so that building now sits dormant and, well, dead.
I had a lot of respect for attorney Lin Wood when he was one of a team of attorneys representing Richard Jewell, the security guard suspected by the FBI (but innocent) of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing. At the time, Wood was interviewed often by Ted Koppel on ABC’s “Nightline,” exposure that helped him gain a national reputation as a defamation lawyer. Unfortunately, for the last few months, Wood has been promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, such as claiming that not only did Trump win, he got 70% of the vote. Wood litigated several lawsuits on Trump’s behalf, all of which failed. There are too many examples of Wood’s QAnon-like efforts in this regard, but rather than list them here, I’ll just point you to his Wikipedia page. Needless to say, my opinion of him is 180 degrees from what it once was.