Perry Mason and Sotomayor

As anyone even half-following the Sotomayor confirmation process has realized by now, the nominee credits the old Perry Mason books and television show with inspiringher to get into law -- and, more oddly, to become a prosecutor -- apparently because the prosecutor in the Mason TV show (Hamilton Burger, played by William Talman) was such a good sport about losing nearly every case.

He said he was happy to lose when it meant an innocent man was cleared because "my job is to do justice."

Anyway, many of you have probably also seen the clip of the new (very new) senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, bonding with Judge Sotomayor over this. He asked her if she could name the episode in which Mason lost a case. She couldn't. A varety of bloggers have now picked up the slack, informing the world that there were actually two such episodes.

There's The Case of the Terrified Typist and The Case of the Deadly Verdict.

Which leads me to wonder this: How important would that be for a real Perry Mason fan? Has Sotomayor come up with the whole "I used to watch Perry Mason" meme because she or somebody else advising her thought it would show she has the common touch, she's not an Ivory Tower type ... or is this a genuine fan?

After all, suppose some judicial nominee had talked about the formative influence upon his life of the Beatles' music, but was then tripped up by the question, "which Beatle was widely rumored to be dead in late 1969?"?

Would we conclude that the Beatles-fandom thing was part of the spin machine?

I'm not at all naive about the machinations of judicial noninations and confirmations, by the way. (I'm the author of a book on the subject.) I wouldn't especially blame Sotomayor for this sort of spinning. But I do like to know what is spin and what isn't.