I watch the reruns of WWTBAM religiously on GSN, and I've seen much contestants send much worse questions than this to the audience... although in defense of some of those cases, the contenstants were older people faced with a pop culture question of the late 90's, which really would be the perfect question to send to the audience if you don't know, rather than, say, a $125,000 question about some obscure literary work
The worst time I can recall it being used was on a $100 question which was "This children's game goes the name 'Duck duck _______'..." and the (fairly young) guy sent it to the audience. Ironically enough, I think the guy went on to win $250,000...