Anderson Cooper, Thomas Friedman, Kelly O’Donnell
And none of them could come up with Eli Whitney? Really?
At least Anderson Cooper knew it was the inventor of the cotton gin, but could not come up with the name. The others did not have a clue.
I was shocked by how bad all of them were, but REALLY surprised by Friedman.
Quite a contrast between them and the high school kids last week.
I never watch the stunt weeks, because the celebs or Washingtoons make me all stabby.
re Friedman…enough to question his columns?
One time years ago, it was Teen Movie Star week, and the answer (not Final Jeopardy, but a regular item during the game) was “American novel about a man who obsessively hunts a great white whale,” and NOT ONE of the three 20-something celebs EVEN RANG IN.
The silence just hung there until the beep, then Alex looked at the camera completely deadpan and said in a voice dry as dust, “Moby Dick.” If ever a man rolled his eyes without rolling his eyes…
Come on, OP. Would it have killed you to post answer/question in the same format of the show? I didn’t see the episode, and you robbed us of our chance to feel smug - the only reason I clicked on the thread.
Category: Inventors
The National Inventors H.O.F. said his work “brought the south prosperity”, but he was out of business within 5 years.
I’m not sure I would have gotten Eli Whitney. I might have guessed Robert Fulton.
God, I miss watching Jeopardy! with my daughter every evening. I can’t wait to get back to Canada…
This entire week of Power Players has shed much light on the adequacy of some of these hot dogs. They have to be working off teleprompters and amazing staff support. I bet some of these folks can’t park their own cars!
No wonder Chris Matthews has to shout down his “guests.” And what was so beautiful about that episode is that he was beaten by a dude from Auburn, Alabama!
I thought I remembered there being a year, or a particular era, mentioned in the clue, but maybe that was just my thought process in trying to solve it.
My first thought was George Washington Carver, which I think one of them guessed. That didn’t seem quite right, though, and I did come up with Whitney a few seconds later. So it was definitely a getable Final Jeopardy, but not super obvious.
I actually thought this group was reasonably on-the-ball, as the celebrity Jeopardies go. j-archive says that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was on earlier in the week; I’m sorry I missed that one.
Famous ‘Journalists’ do very badly at Jeopardy. Wolf Blitzer was terrible.
It doesn’t surprise me that Anderson Cooper, Kelly O’Donnell and Thomas Friedman missed this question.
I remember one Washingtoon show (good description, BTW) where the Final Jeopardy question was “It was the number of senators in the 1958 Congress.” NOT ONE of the pundits came even CLOSE to the correct answer.*
As for the Eli Whitney question … I knew he brought the South prosperity, but had no idea he went out of business in five years. I might have thought about that one too before finally writing down my answer.
*Anyone here got it? 
What is 96?
But that’s hard! You have to know history, politics, and math. Let’s see, 48 x 2 = dang, let’s try it this way, 50 x 2 is 100, subtract 2, no-- subtract 4 = beep! 
I’m from Connecticut, and so got it right away. (Eli Whitney was also from Connecticut, so he was mentioned prominently in history class.)
But it’s ridiculous to assume that these celebrities are idiots simply because they did poorly in Jeopardy; the skills to do well in Jeopardy are different from the ones that make one a successful politician or news commentator.
This is the 2nd time he’s shown himself to be absolutely terrible at this. What an embarrassment!
Bingo! 96 is correct! 
Uhm, yeah! Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union in 1959, so '58 was the last year there were 48 states. 48 x 2 = 96.
For a Washington correspondent or columnist, this should have been a no-brainer!
I might have guessed Eli Whitney, or I might have drawn a blank even though the natural guess is correct. I saw a clip where Matthews couldn’t remember the entire name ‘Francis Gary Powers’. Don’t know what that says about someone. I can remember some ridiculously obscure trivia sometimes, and other times I can’t remember who David Rice Atchison was.
There was a category where the clue was a “time period” in another language and you were supposed to say what it meant in English. IE, HORA would be HOUR.
The clue was Yom, and he answered Yom Kippur. 