Who's Carl This Time

CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell, and here's your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Carl.

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SAGAL: Thank you everybody. Thanks, everybody, great show for you today. We got Rachel Dratch, the very funny veteran of "Saturday Night Live" coming on to play our game. That's exciting.

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SAGAL: But first, a public service announcement. As you may have heard, dreamboat actor Ryan Gosling saved a young woman in New York City, by pulling her away from a speeding cab. This has led to a lot of women and some men, hurling themselves in front of cabs...

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SAGAL: ...in the hope that Mr. Gosling will suddenly appear. Do not do this. Given the uncaring mathematical laws of probability, you will most likely be saved by a much less appealing actor.

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SAGAL: Somebody like Clint Howard or Jeffrey Tambor.

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SAGAL: And while these are charming character actors with a lot of skill, you don't want to owe them your life.

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SAGAL: There's little danger, though in giving us a call. The number is 1-888-Wait-Wait. That's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!

LAURIE STOLTZ: Hi, this is Laurie Stoltz from Rochester, Minnesota.

SAGAL: Beautiful Rochester, I've been there.

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SAGAL: You have some Rochesterans here apparently.

STOLTZ: Oh, wonderful.

SAGAL: What do you do there? Are you at the Mayo Clinic?

STOLTZ: Well, it's known for the Mayo Clinic, but I'm actually an English teacher.

SAGAL: Oh, you are?

STOLTZ: I am.

SAGAL: I didn't realize they had teaching. I just thought it was medicine all day.

STOLTZ: Well, they've got to learn how to speak and communicate too, so...

SAGAL: Are we talking about doctors?

STOLTZ: Yeah.

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SAGAL: That would be novel. All right, that's great. My doctor indicates my problems with grunts and pointing, but all right.

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SAGAL: Welcome to the show, Laurie. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First, say hello to one of the women behind the Washington Post's Reliable Source column, Ms. Roxanne Roberts is here.

ROXANNE ROBERTS: Hi.

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SAGAL: Next, say hello to a writer for HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," Mr. Adam Felber is here.

ADAM FELBER: Hello.

STOLTZ: Hi, Adam.

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FELBER: How are you?

SAGAL: Finally, it's the humorist and the author most recently of "Alphabetter Juice," Mr. Roy Blount, Jr.

STOLTZ: Hello.

ROY BLOUNT JR.: Hey, Laurie.

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SAGAL: Laurie, welcome to the show. You're going to play Who's Carl This Time. Carl Kasell is going to read you three quotes from the week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain two of them, you will win our prize, Carl's voice on your home answering machine.

STOLTZ: OK, I'd love that.

SAGAL: All right, well here we go. Here is somebody beating back the notion that her husband is, quote, "too stiff."

KASELL: We'd better unzip him and let the real man out, because he is not.

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SAGAL: This totally not stiff guy seems to have wrapped up the Republican nomination this week. Who is it?

STOLTZ: That would be Romney.

SAGAL: That would be Mitt Romney, yes.

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SAGAL: That was Ann Romney, assuring the voters of America that despite what you might think, she knows if you unzip him and let him out, Mr. Romney is not stiff.

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FELBER: And has not been.

SAGAL: And America, the nation united, said please let there be a way for us all to un-hear that.

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SAGAL: Well, anyway...

FELBER: I can see the attack ads now. "Mitt Romney is soft."

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FELBER: Just leaving it right there.

SAGAL: Yeah.

FELBER: Ask Mitt Romney why he's soft.

JR.: Did she expand on her remarks at all? I mean did anybody ever ask her why she chose those particular words?

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SAGAL: This is what happened. She was being interviewed by a Baltimore DJ and he said, well people say that your husband is very stiff. I mean what do you say to that?

JR.: Really? Where?

FELBER: I got to go.

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SAGAL: And that's what she said.

FELBER: Mitt, honey, I'm coming home.

ROBERTS: I think it's...

SAGAL: Now, Romney was also anointed as the nominee, in effect, by President Obama, who for the first time attacked Romney by name. The president was criticizing the House Republican budget and he made fun of Romney for calling that budget, quote, "marvelous." Quoting the president, "That's a word you don't often hear when it comes to describing a budget. It's a word you don't often hear generally," unquote.

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SAGAL: Shots fired. But is that what he's got on Romney that he uses fancy words?

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SAGAL: The Romney campaign shot back with three examples of Mr. Obama calling things marvelous. So now we know what the big issues of the election is going to be: our favorite adjectives.

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SAGAL: Meanwhile, can we just say a word for Rick Santorum? He was horribly beaten. He's done, he's over. And he announced, "Well isn't it great, it's halftime in primary season." The problem with his metaphor, yes, fine, it's halftime, but you didn't score any points in the first half and all the voters are heading home to beat the traffic.

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SAGAL: We're going, man.

FELBER: Come on, anyone want to take a shot at me? I think the Ryan budget is scrumptious.

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FELBER: Scrumptious, there's a word you might attack.

SAGAL: I'm stiff.

JR.: Yeah.

FELBER: Stiff as a board.

JR.: Lookie here, wait a minute.

SAGAL: Laurie, for your next quote, here's a columnist with some advice for all of us this week.

KASELL: Wear clean underwear.

SAGAL: That was James Jackson, writing in the Sun Times of Arkansas about the Supreme Court decision that allows the police to do what to anybody they want whenever they want.

STOLTZ: Oh boy. I should have read the news more or listened more this week.

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JR.: Go back to that zip thing, it's...

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FELBER: Yeah, it's good.

SAGAL: No, if you didn't hear about it, I'll give you the answer, it's strip search.

STOLTZ: Oh.

SAGAL: To strip search them. Imagine you're out riding your bike and a policeman arrests you for not having an audible bell. Well, of course, they should be able to strip search you because you might have hidden that bell in a creative place.

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SAGAL: That actual case, the person who was arrested for not having a bell and strip searched was one of the ones that the Supreme Court considered. And then they decided that the police can, in fact, strip search people arrested for any reason to see if they have contraband or gang tattoos. And here I'm quoting Justice Clarence Thomas, "in case they're hot."

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FELBER: He probably shouldn't have written that in the opinion.

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SAGAL: No, well actually Justice Thomas, breaking years of tradition, actually read his concurring opinion from the bench. It went "hubba, hubba."

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SAGAL: The decision came from the five conservative justices. They're famously concerned, as originalists, with what the Founders wanted. And this decision about unlimited strip search fits. As it turns out, James Madison himself liked to play a game with his friends called "find the birthmark."

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FELBER: When they said unreasonable search and seizure, you know, one thing that's reasonable is sexy, yes.

SAGAL: Sexy is always reasonable by the founders. But I want to point out that in making this ruling allowing strip searches of anybody the police wants to strip search, the Court sided with the Obama administration. That was their position. Apparently...

FELBER: But why does the Obama administration want everybody naked?

SAGAL: Well, this is why. Apparently the White House is giving Americans a real reason to listen to the first lady about obesity.

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SAGAL: OK? So now we're going to see a lot of people in the gyms. They're going to be eating right. They're going to be saying man, I got to get into shape for arrest season.

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ROBERTS: Well, also, it's an economic stimulus. You know, you have to go out and buy matching underwear.

JR.: That's true.

SAGAL: Yeah.

ROBERTS: I mean, you don't want some ratty old underwear, you know, unmatching.

JR.: Bless you.

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SAGAL: Honey, why are you putting nice lingerie on? Oh, I'm going to do some breaking and entering. You know, you never know.

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SAGAL: All right, here is your last quote.

KASELL: We're going rogue and infiltrating some turf for a day.

SAGAL: That was somebody talking about her new temporary gig, guest hosting NBC's "Today Show" this week. Who was it?

STOLTZ: Sarah Palin.

SAGAL: Sarah Palin, yes, very good.

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SAGAL: Governor Palin was brought in by NBC to counter Katie Couric. She was guest hosting over on ABC's "Good Morning America." The idea is that they're nemesis because Couric once ambushed Palin by asking her what newspaper she read.

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SAGAL: That makes Couric Voldermort to Sarah Palin's Harry Potter.

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SAGAL: And this is going to be like an arms race, because once NBC put on Palin, ABC then counter attacked with Palin's natural enemy, a moose.

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FELBER: Who was actually pretty good.

SAGAL: Yeah.

FELBER: Yeah. Got along well with Whoopi too. What I think was interesting is that she was on TV, on NBC calling the media the "lamestream media."

SAGAL: Yeah, I know.

FELBER: And for the first time ever, I agreed with her.

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SAGAL: Carl, how did Laurie do?

KASELL: Laurie had two correct answers. So, Laurie, you win our prize.

SAGAL: Well done.

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SAGAL: Thank you so much for playing and congratulations, Laurie.

STOLTZ: Bye-bye.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.