When he is hugging grandmothers or quizzing college students or consoling anguished overbidders on the set of “The Price Is Right,” it is hard to imagine that anything as crass as ambition is what motivates Bob Barker.

A staggering 57% of American workers believe there is a very real chance they will be unemployed in the next 5 to 7 years. But what does that matter to a bloated millionaire fat-cat like you?

We do moste humbly submytte it [this treatise] to[…]your maiestie, to be recognised, ouersene, and corrected.

Whatever it was that had cast a dark shadow and gravened the faces of those normally ebullient people was much too complicated for me to understand.