[EveningStar]

Wikipedia

[T-Bird45]

Interesting coincidence that he should pass away during the current round of online testing to qualify as a Jeopardy! contestant. I plan to take the qualifying test tonight.

[Yo-Yo]

I also recommend the movie Quiz Show.

[Responsibility2nd]

His father was Mark Van Doren, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, literary critic and professor of English at Columbia. His mother, Dorothy Van Doren, was a novelist and editor. And his uncle, Carl Van Doren, had been a professor of literature, a historian and a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. Charles himself had bachelor’s and master’s degrees, a $4,400-a-year position at Columbia and an honest look about him.

 

So he was an Educrat. Ahead of his time.

[EveningStar]

ping

[JonPreston]

Charles Van Doren, an early phony liberal.

[C210N]

The Honeymooners - Episode 18 - "The $99,000 Answer" - Full Episode {ReMastered HD 1080p}

[Flash Bazbeaux]

Charles may be gone, but Mamie’s still with us.

[Bommer]

The grandfathering pioneer for liberalism. Cheat and profit until caught and then Mea culpa.

[Deplorable American1776]

And yesterday Jeopardy had a new one day high score...

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[Intolerant in NJ]

I remember those days - he actually made being smart and educated fashionable for awhile.....

[sparklite2]

Van Doren was a contestant along with Elfrida Von Nardroff on the quiz show ‘Twenty-one.” Elfride labored furiously from inside the glass box to spell what, in retrospect, was just a faux complex word that any idiot could have spelled with a little contemplation. The word is just a string of prefixes and suffixes around the word “establish.”

The word the genius wrestled to the ground was...

antidisestablishmentarianism.

That she first identified this as the longest word in the English language should have tipped us off to the show being fixed.

[x]

After his disgrace, Charles Van Doren worked with Mortimer Adler - a guy who got a lot of underserved grief from the media.

His uncle Carl Van Doren's ex-wife Irita was Wendell Willkie's girlfriend. Willkie's and Roosevelt's people had a de facto truce: neither side could reveal their opponent's sexual adventures because they had their own to worry about.

[stevio]

Was this the guy who knew how many times the word “one” appeared on the one dollar bill?

[Larry Lucido]

I still think Clark Griswold is the master of quiz game shows. (The answer was "Clark." The losing team confused "upper basal ganglion" with "lower basal ganglion.")

[SamAdams76]

It wasn't all downhill for Martin Van Buren. After the big scandal, he went on to a long career at the Encyclopedia Brittanica where he was editor and vice president. He also wrote a number of books.

All in all, a successful and prosperous life. Now the Encyclopedia Brittanica is regarded as somewhat of a joke these days but remember that prior to the 1990s, the Encyclopedia Brittanica was very prestigious and many housewives bought the set from door to door salesmen in the hopes that their children would grow up into scholars. For the most part, the books would go mostly unread and maintain excellent condition for decades, until they ended up being sold in a flea market or given away to strangers.

But I have to tell you, there was once a time in America where having a bookcase in the den groaning with volumes of the EB was a clear marker that you were firmly entrenched in the middle class.

[foreverfree]

There’s a Van Dorn (not Van Doren) Street station on the DC Metro Blue Line (in NoVa).