RIP, Alex Trebek

Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy! since 1984, has passed away after a long bout with cancer. With his passing the show loses its best host, someone who embodied both the show's celebration of knowledge and its demand for cool dignity in presentation and performers.

Art Fleming, who preceded Trebek from 1965 to 1975 and again in a late '70s revival, was amiable in the low-key fashion of contemporaries such as Bill Cullen. He was pleasantly memorable -- when my family played the home version of Jeopardy! someone would say, "I'll be Art" -- but not much more than that.

 Ken Jennings, long rumored to be Trebek's successor, has a peevish quality -- at least, off the air -- that contrasts with Trebek's coolness even when Trebek was his most sardonic. 

In addition, since his cancer diagnosis, Trebek has seemed warmer, touched by the public response to his illness. The Trebek I met many years ago during his promotional visit to Cleveland was a touch chilly and distant in a way that sometimes came across on the air. Maybe he was just having a bad day; my friend Lynne Sherwin remembers a much more appealing Trebek.  However we might have seen in the past, any reservations about Trebek washed away in the affection of his audience.

Where Trebek had been a more traditional game-show host before Jeopardy! -- remember High Rollers? -- he fit well with his best-known series because he was a smart and curious man. Sure, he had the answers -- I mean, questions -- in front of him. But he acted like someone who cared about knowing things, who made no apologies for anyone who was genuinely smart.

In a culture that too often celebrates impulse and ignorance -- and in a corner of entertainment where other products include skill at loading a shopping cart or guessing what other ordinary people said in a poll -- Jeopardy! and Trebek defied those urges. We could argue at length about whether the show has dumbed down its questions; there is still at the show's foundation a demand for information, insight and (in the crazily complicated word categories) cleverness.

 That should remain no matter who is the host. But Trebek gave that foundation a clear, human form. And no matter who follows him, Trebek will be unsurpassed.