CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. We're playing this week with Bobcat Goldthwait, Roxanne Roberts, and Peter Grosz. And, here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Carl.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: In just a minute, Carl finally gets rid of his old America Onrhyme email address in our listener limerick challenge. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-Wait-Wait. That's 1-888-924-8924. Right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news.
Peter, like Mitt Romney, President Obama is a millionaire Harvard graduate. He also needs to show himself as a man of the people. But he blew it this week, when he got a lot of grief for the way he did what?
PETER GROSZ: He visited the National Association for the Advancement of White People.
SAGAL: No.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: I don't know. I guess that would be anybody. I don't know. Can I have a hint please?
SAGAL: Well, they're calling this benandjerrygate.
GROSZ: The way he ate ice cream.
SAGAL: Yes, the way he at ice cream.
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SAGAL: While campaigning in Iowa on Tuesday, Obama stopped by Deb's Ice Cream and Deli in Cedar Rapids, where he ordered a scoop of mint-chocolate-chip in a cone. OK, that's fine, so far, although he only got that when he found out they were out of Chunky Arugula flavor.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: But then he ate his ice cream cone, with a spoon.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: What...
GROSZ: What?
SAGAL: A dweeb.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Seriously. In his defense, maybe he trying to fool Michelle into thinking it was yogurt. Or maybe he had to choose between looking stupid and revealing his tongue piercing to the world.
(LAUGHTER)
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Wait, did it occur to anyone that he was trying to be neat?
GROSZ: Yeah.
SAGAL: Well yeah, that's the problem.
ROBERTS: If you eat it with a spoon, you don't get it on your shirt.
SAGAL: But that's the American way.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: I mean, like Joe Biden, for example, he just dives right into the carton and he smears it all over his mouth.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And he yells, "look at me, I'm a clown."
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That's how you do it.
GROSZ: They're like, Joe, the bus is leaving. "I want to stay here forever."
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: I'm in an ice cream tub.
ROBERTS: Now, would he have been criticized if he'd ordered a scoop in a dish?
SAGAL: No.
ROBERTS: OK.
GROSZ: And then ate it with a cone?
SAGAL: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: What is wrong with the Obama...
SAGAL: You don't eat ice cream out of a cone with a spoon. You eat ice cream out of a dish with a spoon. Either you lick it...
GROSZ: That is something that an alien would do if it landed on our planet.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: I would like an ice cream in one of your cones and then see a spoon and just like eat it with the spoon.
SAGAL: Yes. Into what orifice do I place this delicious treat?
(LAUGHTER)
BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: Obama.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Four years ago, he would have been hailed for it. Sheppard Fairy would have made a poster of him with ice cream on his face with the word spoon at the bottom.
(LAUGHTER)
GOLDTHWAIT: I think it's just because he didn't want a compromising photo of him eating an ice cream cone.
SAGAL: You think? I mean he made the calculation, like he would, that hmm, and his brain is like "I believe that it'll be less embarrassing to be seen eating the ice cream cone with a spoon rather than licking the ice cream."
GOLDTHWAIT: Yeah. He said...
SAGAL: "Therefore, I choose to eat with a spoon."
GOLDTHWAIT: When I get to the end of this, it's going to look like I have a beak.
(LAUGHTER)
GOLDTHWAIT: Would you vote for a bird for president?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Roxanne, this week, in what they claim is a breakthrough, a group of doctors in Israel announced they developed a strain of medical marijuana that doesn't do what?
ROBERTS: Doesn't get you high.
SAGAL: Exactly right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
ROBERTS: So what's the point?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: The kids on the street are calling it Virgin Mary Jane, or Maui Why Isn't Anything Happening?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: It's a new strain of medical cannabis called Avidekel. It contains very low traces of THC, that's the compound that makes you high. So it has the same anti-inflammatory properties of regular marijuana without quote "the numbing sensation that users are accustomed to."
GROSZ: So it's just an anti-inflammatory?
SAGAL: Yeah.
GROSZ: That's like Advil.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: What a boring lab to work in, this place. It's like after work they're saying, "Oh man, I am so the same right now."
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: "Yeah dude, we'll totally eat a reasonable amount of food tonight."
GROSZ: What a shameful, though, thing to be like what are you doing with your time? I'm taking the high out of weed.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: You're no son of mine.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Bobcat?
GOLDTHWAIT: Yes.
SAGAL: Bobcat, last week, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, finally released the results of a long running study and announced the U.S. Government's official position on what?
GOLDTHWAIT: UFOs.
SAGAL: No, close, close.
GOLDTHWAIT: Close? Bigfoot?
SAGAL: Getting there.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: I will stress the oceanic.
GOLDTHWAIT: Oh, OK. Loch Ness Monster.
SAGAL: I'll give you a hint.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: That's what I was going to guess.
SAGAL: Ariel begs to differ.
GOLDTHWAIT: Oh, oh, oh mermaids.
SAGAL: Mermaids, yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
GOLDTHWAIT: Yes.
SAGAL: The NOAA.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Has determined that quote "no evidence of aquatic humanoids has been found," unquote.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: They conducted the study after recently they got thousands of inquiries, which they trace to an Animal Planet show about Mermaids.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: This is how the government prioritizes its investigations? Because of what's on basic cable?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Hey, the U.S. Department of Health says the "Housewives of New Jersey" aren't real, either. Isn't that good news?
GROSZ: You know, "Splash" was probably on, so people were like, can you check on this?
SAGAL: This looks real to me.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: That must be either a great or terrible moment if you work at NOAA or whatever it is.
SAGAL: Yeah.
GROSZ: They're like, all right, you need to save a bunch of whales. You need to free some dolphins from some tuna nets. And you get to check if there's mermaids.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTS: Have you noticed, they never had mermaids in cold water? It's always in these tropical climes.
GROSZ: Because they're not wearing any shirts.
ROBERTS: Exactly.
GOLDTHWAIT: And they're also very hot. They're always attractive. Originally, sailors were confusing manatees with mermaids.
(LAUGHTER)
GOLDTHWAIT: I guess pirates will pretty much hit on anything.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSZ: I saw you last night. What were you with? Oh, that was a mermaid.
GOLDTHWAIT: That was a mermaid.
GROSZ: Are you sure?
GOLDTHWAIT: No, that was a mermaid.
GROSZ: It looked like a manatee.
GOLDTHWAIT: It had whiskers.
SAGAL: And it better have been a mermaid. That's all I can say.
GOLDTHWAIT: The guy said she was a mermaid.
(LAUGHTER)
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.