Friday's edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck was set up as a faux game show called “Beck's Final Exam,” pitting Beck against audience members as dead-of-night Fox News host Greg Gutfeld served up the questions. But unlike a real game show like Jeopardy, in which the questions are rigorously checked for accuracy, Beck's game show was premised on regurgitating the same tired falsehoods and misleading attacks Beck has been peddling since he arrived at Fox.
For instance, the very first question in the “Name That Czar” category was, “This Obama czar considered putting sterilants in our drinking water.” But the “czar” in question, John Holdren, did no such thing. As PolitiFact detailed in giving this claim a "Pants On Fire" designation, Holdren had presented that as something that had been discussed, but he did not advocate for it.
The next question from Gutfeld: “The Obama czar wanted to put a ban on conspiracy theories. Which one was it?” Again, the “czar” in question, Cass Sunstein, did no such thing; Sunstein wrote that banning conspiracy theories was something a government “might” do, but he didn't advocate it.
And so on. The show went on to pluck statements out of context, like President Obama's statement about how electricity rates would “necessarily skyrocket”; hurl disparaging attacks on his enemies, like calling Margaret Sanger “evil” and Rep. Jan Schakowsky a “socialist lawmaker”; and, of course, devote an entire series of questions to George Soros, claiming that he likes to “foment revolutions” and “corrupt elections” in his spare time. There was even a question about Beck's Hindenburg Omen, his predictor for stock market crashes that has yet to come true, despite his repeated invoking of it.
The answers to the questions may have been “correct,” but they were not necessarily the truth. The only way it was possible to win Beck's game show is if you subscribed only to Beck's factually challenged worldview.
That may be jeopardy, but it's not the game-show kind.