On Pat Sajak’s last Wheel of Fortune show, a tribute to the beloved host who liberal snobs tried and FAILED to destroy after he was outed as a Trump fan, writes DAVID MARCUS
Close your eyes and imagine a game show host.
Readers of a certain age will see Pat Sajak; gentle yet witty, good-natured yet unflappable, handsome enough without being at attractive.
Americans invited the Wheel of Fortune in their house every weekday evening for forty years.
In the mid-1980s, the puzzle show with the Ferris wheel and the showgirl assistant attracted more than 40 million viewers every evening. And it holds the record as one of the most watched syndicated shows in history.
That’s quite an achievement for a program anchored by a deplorable.
Yes that’s right. Sajak is MAGA – and probably voted for Donald Trump.
Friday night, when Sajak, 77, takes his final bow in a pre-recorded episode — which ends with the longest episode ever by a nationally syndicated game show host — liberal fans will be forced to contend with the fact that they’ve been deceived for four decades .
They thought Pat Sajak was safe.
For four decades, Americans happily invited the host of Wheel of Fortune into their homes.
In the mid-1980s, the puzzle show with the Ferris wheel and the showgirl assistant attracted more than 40 million viewers every evening.
But they have also been told that Trump voters are dragging, mouth-breathing, drooling buffoons who want to destroy democracy.
Imagine their confusion, because Sajak is none of those things.
The common vowel salesman with the sparkling smile sat so evenly on his knees that the slightest hint of personality or subversiveness would send the audience into hysterics.
Remember the episode where Sajak turned to co-host Vanna White for some pre-planned banter and asked, “Are you an opera fanatic?”
“I’m not a fan, but I do like opera,” Vanna replied.
“Have you ever seen opera in the buff? I’m just curious,” Sajak joked.
The joke falls somewhere between Knock-Knock and Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road. That was all part of Sajak’s appeal.
As Martin Short’s Saturday Night Live character ‘Ed Grimley’ said in the 1980s: ‘It seems so to me [Sajak] I’d be a pretty decent guy, I must say.’
Truer words were never spoken.
Sajak is the normal guy who does his best to keep up with the times, the friendly neighbor with the neat garden and well-behaved children, the person you would want to live next door to you.
Sure, the dynamic of a mostly mute Vanna nodding and smiling with Pat’s musings may have seemed a bit dated in the 2000s, but the show was given a run.
Sajak and Wheel of Fortune provided something that Americans increasingly needed: a break.
In a world full of Light Beer culture wars, it was a half hour (without the commercials) of a breath of freedom from the bitterness.
The common vowel salesman with the sparkling smile sat so evenly on his knees that the slightest hint of personality or subversiveness would send the audience into hysterics.
Sajak and Wheel of Fortune provided something that Americans increasingly needed: a break.
Sure, the dynamic of a mostly mute Vanna nodding and smiling with Pat’s musings may have seemed a little dated in the 2000s, but the show was given a chance.
Who doesn’t long for the days when The price is correct host Bob Barker signed off each episode by advising viewers to have their pets ‘spayed and neutered’?
Today we are fortunate that we are not told to spay and neuter our children.
Sajak’s presentation was a throwback to those simpler times: what American entertainment was, what it should be, and what it was before pervasive progressivism infected our minds and turned every waking moment into an exercise in virtue signaling.
Perhaps that’s why liberal Americans were so shocked and horrified to learn that their lovable riddle master in 2016 was — gasp — a Trump-loving monster.
But it wasn’t until Sajak announced last year that he planned to retire that the liberal media really exploded.
“You might want to put the brakes on pouring one out for the familiar face,” The New Republic wrote in June 2023. “It turns out that when he wasn’t decorating our television screens, he was on the front lines of the advancement of a right-wing agenda.’
Who knows? Very little, I can safely assume, because Sajak never gave viewers any hint as to what his politics were.
In his private life, as is the right of every American, he pursued traditionally conservative goals.
Sajak was a board member at prominent right-wing institutions and spoke at a Christian university.
He questioned the wisdom of “climate change alarmism,” criticized the creeping influence of politics on public education, and even attended dinners with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, among others.
After Sajak announced last year that he would retire this year, the liberal media couldn’t do anything about it.
His greatest sin for those who see life through blue-tinted glasses is that he once had his picture taken with Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“First Chuck Woolery. Now Pat Sajak. Are all game show hosts trash?” spat BET host Marc Lamont Hill on Twitter in September 2022 – referring Wheel very first presenter, who was also exposed as a Republican.
Woolery and Sajak are not the problem here.
Their crazy critics are.
The loving embrace of Sajak by millions of Americans for decades proves that the left’s snobbish caricature of their political opponents is complete and utter nonsense.
Goodbye Pat – you will be missed at 7:30 PM local time.