WASHINGTON, DC, February 4, 2013 - So this kid, Leonard Cooper, did a fantastic job coming from behind and eventually besting his competitors during this season’s Jeopardy! Teen tournament to take the win. And he did so in rock star fashion.
After realizing he didn’t know the answer to the final Jeopardy question but still had a pretty excellent chance of winning anyway, wrote, “Who is some guy in Normandy, but I just won $75,000.“
Pretty awesome. Smart and a sense of humor. A nice combination.
The Final Jeopardy question was “On June 6, 1944 he said, ‘The eyes of the world are upon you” and the answer was Dwight Eisenhower. But alas, that did not matter. Cooper had won!
But then reading up about the fun ending to the competition, I saw several comments criticizing the young man’s massive afro hairstyle. Many urged him to cut it and others made jokes about it. No harm really as he is still $75,000 richer for being smart while the critical commenters are without…or at least have to put in more work to earn that amount of money.
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Still, it reminded me of the whole Gabrielle Douglas “hair” drama of last summer Olympics when some social media peanut gallery of people decided to repeatedly criticize the quality of the historic Gold medaling gymnast’s hair. She became the first US Gymnast to win overall Gold in Olympic history.
Yet, some people were content on having a discussion of her locks share, dominate and sometime overpower any talk of her accomplishments.
And though not on larger scale, Cooper’s hair detractors are tactfully electing to dismiss the wonderful win to focus on the texture, volume and puffiness of the natural hair growing out of his head.
Grooming and appearance is indeed important for school children of all ages as they will be confident to focus on studies if they are well kept. It causes one to pause over the fact there is too much attention on the superficial.
Few boys that look like this kid make it to Jeopardy! and even fewer win. Kids that look like Leonard are known well in movies, TV, rap videos and in the news for negative things even though there are more smart kids that look like Leonard out there doing well academically and don’t get in trouble than one would ever see celebrated in our media.
So lay off the jokes about hair and appearance and give the kid a “kudos” and “salud” for a job well done.
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