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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 Centennial Hall at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Peter Sagal.

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PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Why thank you. Thank you. Calm yourselves.

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SAGAL: We're excited to see you too. We've got a great show for you today. We got Joey Burns of the great Tucson band Calexico. He'll be here with us later.

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SAGAL: But first, I just want to say how pleased we were to come to Arizona and visit again. We had heard you guys weren't as welcoming to outsiders as you used to be.

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SAGAL: And then, wow, Governor Jan Brewer met our plane on the tarmac.

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SAGAL: To welcome us personally, after she made sure all of us had our papers, of course.

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SAGAL: We don't require proof of citizenship, so give us a call. The number, 1-888-924-8924, that's 1-888-Wait-Wait. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!

GAY FRANCE: Hi Peter, this is Gay France, calling from Redondo Beach, California. How are you?

SAGAL: I'm fine. Gay France?

FRANCE: Yes. We've met, Peter.

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CHARLIE PIERCE: Is there any other kind?

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ROY BLOUNT: Is your middle Paris?

FRANCE: No.

SAGAL: Who are you married to, Dour Britain?

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SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, Gay. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First, say hello to the man behind Esquire's politics blog and a contributor to Grantland, it's Mr. Charlie Pierce.

FRANCE: Hi, Charlie.

PIERCE: Hi, Gay.

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SAGAL: Next, a contributor to "CBS Sunday Morning," and a co-host of the new WNYC podcast Relationshow, Faith Salie is here.

FRANCE: Hi, Faith.

FAITH SALIE: Hi, Gay.

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FRANCE: And lastly, an author most recently of "Alphabetter Juice," Mr. Roy Blount, Jr.

Hi, Roy.

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BLOUNT: Hi, how are you doing, Gay?

FRANCE: Good.

SAGAL: Gay, we're going to start off with Who's Carl This Time. Carl Kasell, of course, is going to recreate for you three quotations from the week's news. Your job: simply explain or identify two of them. Do that, you'll get Carl's voice on your voicemail. Ready to go?

FRANCE: I hope so.

SAGAL: Yeah, 'cause now would be the time.

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SAGAL: You want to take a minute, 'cause we can wait?

FRANCE: I'm ready.

SAGAL: OK, let's go. Here is your first quote.

KASELL: I'm learning to say y'all and I like grits. Strange things are happening to me.

SAGAL: That was someone who desperately tried to pander to voters in Mississippi and Alabama this week, and failed to do so. Who was it?

FRANCE: Is that Mitt Romney?

SAGAL: It was Mitt Romney, yes.

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SAGAL: Now, I just want you to know, we here are as tired of Mitt Romney as we're betting you are by this point. But apparently, Mitt Romney cannot get enough of them.

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FRANCE: Because he keeps giving us more material. He went down to the south this week and he tried to win over skeptical voters with a fake southern accent. Hey, y'all. Who else courts people by doing a bad imitation of them?

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SAGAL: It turns out he asked his wife out for their first date by going up and saying "Oh, I'm a pretty girl. Look at me."

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SAGAL: Anyway, the good people of the south did not buy it. Both Alabama and Mississippi went to Rick Santorum. Romney's team, they dealt with this loss. This is what they said. They said it's no problem. We're going to make up. We're going to win delegates because we won the Northern Marianas Islands, Guam, the US Virgin Islands and American Samoa.

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SAGAL: They said that. That was their argument.

PIERCE: He's not going to be president, but he is going to be a volcano guy.

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SAGAL: Yes. No, he does have an advantage there because those are all the islands where his money lives.

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SAGAL: Comedian Jeff Foxworthy endorsed Romney and campaigned with him. But what he was really doing was he was getting material for his hilarious new "You Couldn't Possibly be a Redneck" routine.

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SAGAL: For example, you couldn't possibly be a redneck if your real first name is Willard.

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PIERCE: But if you have $250 million and you wear jeans with creases in them, you might just be a Romney.

SAGAL: That's true.

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SALIE: They were all trying to outdo each other with their love of grits weren't they?

BLOUNT: Yeah, cheesy grits, he said. I never heard it called cheesy. It's cheese grits.

SALIE: Cheese grits, right?

SAGAL: Cheese grits.

SALIE: Right.

BLOUNT: Cheese grits. Cheesy grits are grits that aren't so good.

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SAGAL: All right, very good. Here's your next quote, Gay.

KASELL: Today, if you make enough money for the firm, and are not currently an ax murderer, you will be promoted into a position of influence.

SAGAL: That was from a very public resignation letter from one Greg Smith. He used a scathing op-ed in the New York Times to quit his job at what company?

FRANCE: Goldman Sachs.

SAGAL: Goldman Sachs, indeed, very good.

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SAGAL: Mr. Smith decided to let his bosses know he was leaving by publishing this op-ed in the Times. He said all Goldman Sachs cared about was making money. He also expressed shock and dismay that fish swam and birds flew.

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SAGAL: He said that the company only cares about profits. What did he think Goldman Sachs would be interested in? Making artisanal cheeses?

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SAGAL: So people who don't like Wall Street reacted to this by saying "I told you so." And Wall Street insiders say that, you know, Mr. Smith was disgruntled because he didn't get the bonus or promotion he deserved. And ax murderers were upset because they were all hoping for a career in finance.

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SAGAL: It's like, why are we disqualified, we have that can-kill attitude so important in today's market.

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SAGAL: This is our favorite thing. In his op-ed, Mr. Smith listed his achievements, so as to make himself more credible.

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SAGAL: And one of them was, quote, willing a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel.

BLOUNT: Oh yeah, right.

SAGAL: Known as the Jewish Olympics, unquote.

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SAGAL: That, of course, stopped the critics in their tracks. They were going to impugn his credibility. But wait, this guy beat a bunch of Jews at ping pong.

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SAGAL: Basically, he has the same unimpeachable character as my Uncle Morty.

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BLOUNT: A Bronze.

SAGAL: He got a bronze.

BLOUNT: Yeah.

SAGAL: He's the third best Jewish ping pong player.

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BLOUNT: In the world.

PIERCE: Well, he lost to your Uncle Morty in the semis.

SAGAL: Apparently.

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SAGAL: All right, Gay, here's your last quote.

KASELL: This has nothing to do with Wikipedia or Google.

SAGAL: That was the head of a pretty famous publishing company that's no longer going to publish their famous set of volumes. What's finally going out of print after 244 years?

FRANCE: Oh, that's Britannica.

SAGAL: Yeah, the Encyclopedia Britannica, very good.

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SAGAL: Yes.

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SAGAL: If you don't understand why it's a big deal that we'll no longer be able to buy a whole shelf of leather-bound encyclopedias for more than a thousand dollars a set, go find your parents and ask them to ask their parents to find a Ouija board to commune with their grandparents, and they'll tell you.

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SAGAL: Of course, despite what the head of the company said, it has everything to do with Wikipedia. If you don't believe me, go to a library and wait for a teenager to pull down, you know, a bound volume of the encyclopedia and watch them try to find a recap of last night's episode of "Glee."

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SAGAL: People have not looked carefully enough into the ramifications of this move. For example, without big expensive rows of bound encyclopedias, what are personal injury lawyers going to sit in front of in their TV commercials?

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SAGAL: What are we going to put - without those bookcases - what are we going to put in front of the secret doors to our underground lairs?

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SAGAL: And you cannot hide your drug stash in a hollowed out flash drive.

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BLOUNT: There are no real phone books anymore either, are there? I haven't seen a phone book in years. So what are muscle men going to tear apart?

SAGAL: It's true.

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BLOUNT: Tear apart cell phones.

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SAGAL: Actually, this is a little sad for people of our age, because these encyclopedias were what we used to write our first, you know, reports in grade school. That's how we learned the minimum number of words you had to change so it wasn't plagiarism.

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SAGAL: Carl, how did Gay do on our quiz?

KASELL: Gay, you had three correct answers, so I'll be doing the message on your home answering machine or voicemail.

SAGAL: Well done, Gay.

SALIE: Good job, Gay.

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SAGAL: Thanks so much.

FRANCE: Oh, thank you, thank you.

SAGAL: Thank you, Gay. Take care.

FRANCE: Bye.

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