Dumb and Dumber: Wheel of Misfortune, Melania’s NFT, Urban’s Meltdown, and Dumbest of the Year!
I hope you are having a restful holiday week as we hurtle into the new year. The last two years have been exhausting. I pray that Round 3 of the pandemic is tamer, and that we all laugh more in 2022. Snark on!
Unlike Covid, there’s no vaccine against stupidity.
Here’s my roundup of the latest shenanigans involving misfortunes among the fortunate, along with the crowning glory, Dumbest of the Year.
DUMB — OH (dear), VANNA!
I’ll take a “D” for “Dumb,” Pat.
Charlene Rubush lost her chance to win a brand new Audi on Wheel of Fortune when she paused before saying the final word of the winning phrase in a bonus round. Ironically, the final word was “word.”
She lost, even though she spit out the word “word” before the buzzer sounded.
“You know, this one’s tough,” host Pat Sajak told Rubush, “because you said all the right words, including the word ‘word’ but, as you know, it’s gotta be more or less continuous. We’ll allow for a little pause but not four or five seconds. I’m sorry. You did a good job in getting it, but we can’t give you the prize, and it was the Audi.”
Fans cried foul, or some other word starting with an “F” that required the purchase of only one vowel.
Jeopardy champ Alex Jacob tweeted, “Come on @WheelofFortune, the woman literally chose the right word. Give her the car.”
This is the second time in a week there’s been a controversial bonus round on Wheel — the first involved misspelling rapper Yung Joc’s name as “Young Jock.” (Meantime, TMZ says Yung Joc himself thinks Wheel actually meant a “young jock,” but I gotta tell ya, either one suggests that the puzzle maker at WoF was dipping into the eggnog early this year.)
If Rubush’s loss is based on taking too long to say the winning phrase, what is the point of a buzzer? Is Wheel losing its drive?
S-T-_-P-_-D.
To make the game show’s production team at Sony Pictures Television look even dumber, Audi went ahead and gave Charlene the car!
DUMBER — MELANIA TRUMP SIGNALS PEAK NFT
Melania Trump‘s latest business venture is selling a series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). I’m going to assume she knows what they are. I still don’t really know what they are.
The first is called “Melania’s Vision,” and it “embodies Mrs. Trump’s cobalt blue eyes, providing the collector with an amulet to inspire.”
Wait, what’s that in the lower righthand corner?
Quick detour. Look at her autograph.
This says "Melania Trump" — I think.
Compare that to his signature:
I have questions.
The NFT costs 1 Solana, or SOL, a type of cryptocurrency currently worth about $180. Each copy “includes an audio recording from Mrs. Trump with a message of hope.”
If you wanna buy one, knock yourself out.
But when a former FLOTUS is selling something which isn’t really unique, or … real… , on Parler (yes, Parler is back), using crypto, and “a portion” of proceeds will help foster children by funding her initiative to fight bullying (DON’T GET ME STARTED), I think we’ve reached peak NFT.
DUMBERER — URBAN MEYER’S MELTDOWN
Wanna make $40 million disappear?
It takes work. You must fulfill a long list of bonehead moves.
Urban Meyer/Steph Chambers, Getty
First, hire a strength coach who’s been accused of bullying and making racist remarks, then violate the NFL’s no-contact rule, then bring in your star quarterback from college even though he hasn’t thrown a football professionally in six years, then let a woman you’re not married to give you a pretend lap dance after you refused to return home with your team which just suffered an embarrassing loss, then lose more games, then tell your fellow coaches they’re losers, then kick a kicker. (Did I miss anything?)
I would’ve said that former Jacksonville Jaguars coach Urban Meyer “allegedly” kicked a kicker, but the reporter who wrote the original story says no one is contesting that the kicker was kicked. What’s being disputed is how hard.
Not a good defense.
DUMBERERER — SOUTHWEST CEO SKIPS MASK, GETS COVID
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly testified before Congress with other airline chief executives this month.
Kelly questioned the value of wearing masks on airplanes. “I think the case is very strong that masks don’t add much, if anything, in the air cabin environment — it’s very safe, very high quality compared to any other indoor setting," he told the Senate Commerce Committee.
American Airlines’ CEO Doug Parker agreed with him.
Kelly is reportedly vaccinated and boosted, and he didn’t wear a mask when he testified. Neither did anyone else.
The group sat in a congressional hearing room, not an air-filtered plane.
Gary Kelly, second from left/The Wall Street Journal
Kelly soon tested positive for Covid.
Thankfully, his symptoms are mild and he’s recovering. I’m just wondering if there’s something he could have done, oh, I don’t know, maybe some object he could’ve worn, that might have prevented him from being infected and potentially infecting others.
Prolly not.
DUMBERERERER — AMAZON BOWS TO WINNIE THE POOH
The most powerful man in the business world isn’t some Wall Street CEO, or Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.
It’s China’s Xi Jinping, aka “Winnie the Pooh.” (Just don’t call him that.)
Every major company and CEO in America — even Iron Man — rolls over for Xi. Just last week Intel apologized for asking suppliers to avoid a region of China where, ya know, some people may not be treated well.
But what caught my eye was a story from Reuters that claims that Amazon’s website in China has removed all reviews of Xi’s books because — according to two sources cited in the story — someone gave the books less than five-star reviews.
Best books ever!/Andrea Verdelli, Getty
I guess it’s not dumb, financially, to grovel before the dictatorial head of the world’s largest market and second-largest economy. It does seem wrong, though.
Here in the U.S., where major companies refuse to give the federal government the time of day, we do have the benefit of reading reviews of Xi’s books on Amazon’s site. For now.
There are a couple of positive reviews, like this one from a purchaser in Phoenix: “Communism will win.”
But most English-reading buyers are not fans. One verified Amazon customer who chose to remain anonymous (smart idea) put it this way: “Best book every written? No. But the worst? Quite Possibly.”
DUMBERERERERER — THE EARLY COVID TEST THE FDA IGNORED
There was a $10 at-home Covid test ready to scale and ship in March, 2020.
Not March, 2021. 2020.
We’ll never forget the first time. /Ishara S. Kodikara, Getty
In an incredible bit of reporting, ProPublica tells the story of Harvard-trained scientist Irene Bosch. She was working on a test for tropical diseases, but early in the pandemic, her company was able to adapt that product to test for Covid. The National Institutes of Health approved of her technology, and the company received a $2 million infusion from Silicon Valley to ramp up.
“Bosch and her colleagues had a test that would detect coronavirus in 15 minutes and produce a red line on a little chemical strip,” ProPublica’s Lydia DePillis writes. “The factory where they were planning to make tests for dengue fever could quickly retool to produce at least 100,000 COVID-19 tests per week, she said, priced at less than $10 apiece, or cheaper at a higher scale.”
The tests could be taken at home. You wouldn’t have to go to a doctor or sit in a long line of cars at a testing site.
On March 21, 2020, Bosch asked the FDA for emergency authorization to use the test.
Didn’t happen. The FDA kept throwing up roadblocks. The test was never good enough. Regulators reportedly wanted Bosch’s test to be as sensitive as a lab test, able to capture a positive Covid result early in the infection, before someone was in the throes of symptoms.
Nevertheless, the test “could have been used to catch superspreaders, with warnings that a negative result wouldn’t rule out infection,” writes DePillis.
While the test wasn’t good enough for the FDA, it would’ve been good enough for me and maybe millions of other people in March 2020 when we had nothing.
The FDA would not comment on a specific test submission, but the agency told ProPublica that it’s been working to authorize “accurate and reliable” home tests since the beginning of the pandemic. “It is the FDA’s responsibility to protect the public health by declining to authorize poorly performing tests or those without complete data.”
Some scientists believe the standards have now been lowered to the point where Bosch’s test might’ve passed muster in certain applications.
“You could have [had] antigen tests saving lives since the beginning of the pandemic,” Bosch said. “That’s the sad story.”
It is.
DUMBEST — MEDICAL INSURANCE BILLING
In 2015, my son took a Lyft to the ER because he was doubled over in pain. (He thought an ambulance would cost too much. That’s my boy!)
He ended up needing an emergency appendectomy.
When we got the bill, it was $44,000. For the cost of a nice new car or a year’s tuition at a private university, we paid for a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, nurses, medicine, a hospital bed for two nights, and a couple of tasty hospital meals.
After insurance stepped in, the total plummeted 90% to $4,400.
Call me naive, but I think they still made a profit at $4,400. When I tried to find out what things actually cost, I never got a clear answer.
No one ever does. But that’s changing — a little — as the Affordable Care Act now forces hospitals to publish some costs. That’s if you can find them.
However, this alleged new transparency doesn’t help anyone in an emergency. You don’t have time to shop around.
“Excuse me, can I see your price list?”/Science Photo Library
How nuts is the system?
— NPR reports that a mother who works in the insurance industry — and has health insurance — gave birth early to a baby boy who needed to spend almost two months in the NICU. The bill was $660,000.
Insurance paid $110,000, leaving the family with $550,000 to pay on their own.
That’s more than the current median home price.
— In a separate investigation, the Wall Street Journal looked at identical emergency-room visits to two Boston hospitals only three miles apart. One visit cost $946. The other cost $577, nearly 40% less. “Hospitals and insurance companies set prices through bargaining, where they make trade-offs that save money for some patients but not others,” the Journal writes.
Who has time to check into that when you’re having a heart attack?
— Finally, David Lazarus at the Los Angeles Times revealed eye-popping markups in costs when an operating room nurse secretly provided him with information from a Southern California hospital.
For example, the hospital’s cost for one suture was $19.30. “But the system said the ‘computed charge per unit’ was $149.58,” Lazarus writes. “This is how much the patient and his or her insurer would be billed.”
That’s a 675% markup. Who has margins like that?
I don’t know what the answer is, I just know that the system meant to make you better is very, very ill.
I’ve always supported the idea of free markets over nationalized healthcare, but it’s not a free market when you’re at the mercy of some third party making price agreements beyond your control.
DUMBEST OF THE YEAR
I started writing Wells $treet for Facebook (now Meta!) at the end of June, and I’ve written 11 Dumb and Dumber columns, including this one.
Dumberererers over the last six months have included billionaires like bad neighbor Bill Gross, bad lobbyist Tom Barrack, and bad architect Charlie Munger. There was the judge who let the Sackler family walk away with most of their billions despite pioneering the opioid epidemic (they may not get away with it, after all). Elizabeth Holmes and her ex-boyfriend were both highlighted, along with many dumb CEOS, dumb reporters, dumb companies, and dumb countries.
I even outed myself over my crypto purchases, which are still down 13%.
After re-reading those columns, I’ve decided who is Dumbest of Them All for 2021: two brothers whose egos overwhelmed their judgment, whose past actions have cost them millions in current and future earnings.
Ladies and gentlemen, and anyone else, I bring you:
THE CUOMO BROTHERS, mentioned here and here.
In happier times/Dia Dipasupil, Getty Images
Both Andrew and Chris got big, fat lumps of coal in their Christmas stockings this year. I await their second act in 2022, because these two guys are convinced they’ve got one.
Kinda like Covid.
A MOST WONDERFUL THING
I always end on something positive, and this one touched my heart. Yes, I have a heart.
The musician Logic had a breakthrough hit in 2017 with a song called “1-800-273-8255,” which happens to be the phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.
In the song, a haunting chorus begins, “I don’t wanna be alive,” then transforms to “I want you to be alive” and “I finally wanna be alive.”
My Hero/Scott Dudelson, Getty
A study this month in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) says phone calls to the suicide hotline jumped almost 7% in the weeks after the song was released, and again after Logic performed it during the MTV Music Video Awards and the Grammy Awards. Based on those statistics, researchers estimate the song may have saved almost 250 lives.
Logic’s star-studded music video centers on a gay teenager considering suicide. It has over 400 million views. I challenge you to watch it and not have your heart broken.
The musician may not have set out to save lives, but he did. That’s art worth celebrating.
Cover image credit: McKevin, Getty Images.
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