We tried to look away, but it was no use once we read the headline: “Why It Matters That Alex Trebek Mispronounced The Name Of My People On ‘Jeopardy!’ ” The piece ran, fittingly, at the Huffington Post. The author, Ngozi Nwangwa—Shirley, to use her anglicized name—is a New York-based writer and “a queer Nigerian-American who is passionate about giving marginalized folks a space to be heard.” She grew up watching Jeopardy! with her family. While recently binge-watching old episodes of the show, Nwangwa heard host Alex Trebek mispronounce the name of the ethnic group from which she is descended: the Igbo people.
Trebek pronounced it Ig-boh, with a hard g. But it’s pronounced Ee-boh. The g is silent.
Whereupon the author banged out a 900-word complaint about how Trebek flawlessly pronounces European names and words like La Rochefoucauld and Reichsmarschall but can’t say the name of a marginalized Nigerian ethnic group correctly. All through her childhood, she recalls, Americans mispronounced her name and the name of the Igbo people, but not until she was older was she “able to contexualize the term ‘microaggression.’ ” Watching old shows from her younger years, Nwangwa writes, “has a whiplash effect. . . . I don’t remember this hurting so much—when did I get this old?”
The question is touching, in a way. But of course she didn’t just get old. She got manipulated and jaded by the American left’s grievance racket, and now the poor woman can’t even watch a game show without searching for microaggressions and carping about being branded “other” by Euro-American ignoramuses.
We’ll take “Liberalism & Its Discontents” for $1,000, Alex.
