Another political figure on Jeopardy

Via Power Line, Hot Air features video of Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings getting spanked on Celebrity Jeopardy. She was more than $20,000 behind at the start of Final Jeopardy -- ouch.

But that's still not as bad as Christie Todd Whitman's Final Jeopardy answer. Here's what I wrote last year:

The final Jeopardy question asked how many members of the Senate there were in 1958. Now, the only possible answers that make sense are 96, 98, and 100 given that the only two states that had not entered the Union by World War I were Alaska and Hawaii. Whitman's guess? 46. Yes, that would mean there were 23 states in the Union in 1958 -- something that was true in ... 1820-1821. It doesn't even make sense if she thought each state had one senator. (Correct answer: 96. Alaska and Hawaii entered in 1959.) Time to go back to civics class, Governor.

It didn't end up mattering, though -- Whitman was ahead by so much that she won anyway. Spellings, by contrast, went down to defeat.

PS Has anyone noticed how much time the Bush cabinet secretaries have on their hands? First Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez waited in line for an hour to get Doris Kearns Goodwin to sign his book, and now the Secretary of Education is on Jeopardy. Doesn't anyone have, you know, work to do?

Comments

[Paul XQ]

I can't read powerline or view hot air so I don't get how Margaret could have been down 20,000 dollars on final jeopardy, but leave it to a Bush appointee, they can find a way to screw up anything. I guess if Bush was watching he would say, "Margaret did a heck of a job" on Jeopardy.

[Michael Koplow]

I didn't see the Whitman episode, but is it possible that the "46" was a sloppily written "96," and Whitman, needing to make a quick decision, decided it was better to look ignorant than to look like a crybaby? It's possible I'm clueless about how "Jeopardy" works.