Truth: My Ringtone is the "Price Is Right" theme song

I used to drive my father to fits of apoplexy by reminding him that I thought that being a game show host was "pretty much the highest calling known to mankind."

If Dad were still with us, and if he had a Facebook account, he would not "like" Bob Barker, Tom Kennedy, Jack Narz (brothers, those two), Bill Cullen, Art Fleming and Wink Martindale.  He did not like lowbrow TV fodder such as game shows, talk shows and situation comedies, so you can see, we had a lot of fun not watching television together.  

I happen to love game shows, still catch The Price Is Right whenever I can, and often insist that answers be given in the form of a question.  

But, if I were playing "Jeopardy," and the answer given were "This unctuous Canadian has been hosting this show since, like, forever," I would be quick to reply with "Alex Trebek!"  I just don't like his approach, his pedantic way of crooning, "Nooooooo...we were looking for "a pierced thorax," not "a boo-boo"!  He seems to forget we all know he has the answers right there in front of him, rather than having to recall something someone mentioned in a Biology lab twenty years ago.  And so I agree with those who just think he's a little too...too much.

Right, but wrong

But.  When an eighth-grader had the right information but the wrong spelling on a Kids Week show, posing the question "What is the Emanciptation Proclamation?" to the answer "Abraham Lincoln called this document, which took effect in 1863, ‘A fit and necessary war measure,' " the judges called it a wrong answer. Another young man got it right ("What is the Emancipation Proclamation?" while the third contestant, a young woman, wrote,"What is the Second Amendment?"  - an answer that made me wonder how she got to the eighth grade thinking that) and won the game.  Thomas Hurley, he of the bad spelling, went home to Connecticut and told the Danbury News-Times newspaper he felt he’d been “cheated” by the show.  

He gets no sympathy here, if he's going to be that way about it. People today should be used to having to spell things correctly, but they aren't, so when they want to say they are "definitely" going to church on Sunday and they enter d-e-f-i and their phone pops up with "defiantly," they go with it, which is brutal. Spelling counts, math counts, there is right and wrong in this, and I hope that Thomas's parents have taken the time to sit down and teach him so. 

How is it that people who are so quick to sue their doctor for making a medical error, and break their necks to get to the courthouse to sue the grocery store when they break their neck on a grape on the floor of the produce department, are so quick to shrug off spelling a simple word incorrectly?