Opinion: Habeas corpus for $50, Alex

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Public officials – and future public officials – have appeared on game shows before, with mixed results. Future California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a contestant on ‘The Dating Game,’ but according to his website never got to accompany the woman he chose on the town because she had a boyfriend.

Then there was Desert Storm commander Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s appearance on Celebrity Jeopardy! (the real thing, not the Saturday Night Live parody). Schwarzkopf didn’t show himself to be a dumb Kopf; on the other hand, his charity winnings of $14,000 were only a little more than half of the $25,000 racked up by Cheech Marin of Cheech and Chong. (Cheech must have swept that ‘Potent Smokables’ category.)

The award for Worst Performance by a Public Official on a Game Show probably should go to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer for his recent performance on NPR radio’s twee quiz show ‘Wait, Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!’ Along with some very small talk about his practice, when he was the junior justice, of delivering coffee to his colleagues, the brainy Breyer answered three questions about rock stars in the show’s ‘Not My Job’ segment.

Answered them wrong, that is. Breyer, who has betrayed familiarity on the bench with the technology that allows kids to listen to pop music, was pretty clueless when it came to rock trivia. The former Harvard law professor didn’t know that David Bowie tried to exorcise a demon from his swimming pool, that Iggy Pop followed a sausage-only diet for a year or that Ozzy Osbourne, on checking into rehab, asked for directions to the bar.

If only Breyer had brought along his law clerks.