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Monday, March 22, 2010

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July 12, 2001

Ask the Audience

Richard Rosner, a former ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ contestant, is suing the show because he claims that the correct answer to the question that knocked him off the show (at the $16,000 mark, incidentally) was not among the four choices he was given. How could an asshole who advertises himself as having ‘an IQ in the top one-half of one percent of Americans’ and having been ‘a runner-up in Omni magazine’s Smartest Man in America contest’ ever be wrong? Ever in his life? Easy: he didn’t listen to the question:
He said he was asked to choose the capital with the highest altitude from Mexico City, Quito, Bogota and Katmandu. After phoning a friend for help with the answer, which the show allows contestants to do, Rosner picked Katmandu, [his attorney] said, but was told the answer was Quito. After researching the question later, Rosner ‘determined that not one of the answers forced upon him was the singularly or absolutely correct answer,’ the lawsuit states. ‘Most sources recognize La Paz, Bolivia as having the highest altitude. I’m in the middle of researching this as well,’ [his attorney] said.
Now, I don’t know the relative altitudes of any of those cities and I’m willing to concede that there may be some discrepancies in the various statistics out there. But listen, geniuses (I’m referring here to Rosner and his attorney, not you, dear audience), the question only asks which of the given capitals is at the highest altitude, not which capital of all the capitals is at the highest altitude. Leave La Paz out of it.

Related link: Being Regis Philbin

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