Or is he just a pretentious douche who pretends to be a genius because he already has all the answers?
…he’s reading from cards. Exactly what pretending do you think he’s doing?
Yeah, not sure how “doing his job” = “being a douche.” If anything, he’s made jokes about how, without those cards, he wouldn’t know anything.
I’ve heard him mispronounce things. Diatom comes to mind. BTW, did anyone else catch the the 3-word rhyming category error a couple days ago? Moles are NOT rodents!!
Sometimes his demeanor when responding to contestants, particularly when they answer incorrectly, has a tone of superiority as though he would have known the answer and that it was obvious.
There’s a smugness about it. Or I’m just not “reading the cards” correctly, as it were.
When contestant hazards a particularly wrong answer, he has this “Oh, no” stock response. Like, wow, you are so wrong. I’m sure PSXer can dig up a cite.
While I don’t think he is as obnoxious as the internet seems to think, this is the behavior that bugs me. He acts like it’s obvious what he correct answer is. Like he and everyone else knows the answer except you, the complete idiot contestant.
That, and when he laughed about the goat that ate the concrete.
Here, I dug up a classic “Oh, no.” I swear he does this at least once a week.
But you’re watching the show, right?
What Is: His Demeanor = Doing His Job. 
I’ll take “Pissed Off About Entertainment TV” for $200 Alec…
Moles? Of course they’re rodents! According to Wikipedia, … umm, hmm. OK, ignorance fought.
Anyway, he may occasionally mispronounce things, and he undeniably comes off sometimes as a smug bastard, but my general impression of him is that he actually is smart … more so than other game show hosts.
On the other hand, I didn’t even know the truth about moles, so what do I know?
Didn’t he do a charity gameshow thing at one point, and came-off pretty well? I have a distinct memory of it, but Google doesn’t come up with anything.
He always pronounces Cape Verde as Cape Vair-Day.
I recall reading an interview with him years ago, he said on his show he knew about 60% of the answers on Jeopardy.
Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian, but that guy deserved a whole lot more condescension than that.
He’s standing in for all of the folks at home who are sure that of course they know better.
Assuming he’s being smug, of course. It’s been a long, long time since I watched, but I don’t remember any significant smugness. He always seemed kind of commisserating to me.
I love the opening line:
Moles are small cylindrical mammals
They are… quite cylindrical, but of all the adjectives one could use to describe an animal that wouldn’t be my first one. Now I’m imagining:
Cow (mathematics)
A cow, defined mathematically, is a large spherical mammal that…
As far as the OP goes: pretentiousness is the whole shtick. The finely calibrated snark is hardly that different from what we expect here on the SDMB, in fact.
I’ve never understood why people dislike him. Considering the type of show *Jeopardy! *is, he seems to be just right. And regarding his mispronunciations, they’re few and far between, considering the things he pronounces correctly.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been happily breathing oxygen for the last few decades, but holy shit that answer was embarrassingly terrible.
It’s like answering a golf question with Roger Federer.
You don’t have to be Canadian to feel that way. (How the hell does someone that stupid make it on the show?)
Missed the edit window, but:
Trebek probably wasn’t exceptionally informed when he took over Jeopardy, but holy shit, after 30 years of hosting a trivia show don’t you think he’s picked up a bit of knowledge? Isn’t this how EVERY profession works? I’m pretty sure emergency room doctors, after 30 years experience, know a thing or two they didn’t at the start of their careers?
I’m sure Trebek at this point is an extremely informed individual.