By Randy Cohen
The list is: president, vice president, Senate majority leader, House majority leader, head of the National Endowment for the Arts, head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. List of what?
by noon ET Thursday to e-mail your answers (NewsQuiz@slate.com).
Responses to Tuesday’s question (No. 19)–“Not Just the Money”:
It “isn’t just about dollars and cents. It’s about winning wars and saving lives.” What is? Says who?
“Says Random House CEO Alberto Vitale, lobbing a copy of Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost out the window of his penthouse bunker. ‘Take that, ya damn Krauts!’ “–Ariel Kaminer (Fred Graver had a similar answer.)
“It was either Alfred Nobel on the invention of dynamite or Isaac Mizrahi on his spring collection.”–Conn Nugent
“The plan to merge the Green Berets with the Salvation Army. Says me.”–Bill Franzen
“Cigarette ads on Nickelodeon. Tobacco industry spokesman.”–Patty Marx
“Bill Gates on Slate magazine.”–Viswanath Subramanian
“It’s my 15-year-old son’s rationale for cheating at Risk.”–Dennis Levandoski
“Sometimes at night, when the city is quiet except for the rustling of leaves and the soft voices of lovers having an argument, I like to think that my life is about more than dollars and cents, that it’s about winning wars and saving lives. That always gets me so tired from laughing that I’m asleep practically before my head hits the pillow.”–Nancy Franklin
Click for more responses.
Randy’s Wrap-Up
When a contributor is parenthetically designated “similar,” this is not to demean the response but to denote a common reference. That was certainly the case here today when I ran only one of several excellent James Cameron answers. Maybe someday, when this crazy war is over, the entire “News Quiz” can be devoted to denigrating the self-satisfied director who distilled one of the most dramatic events of the century into nine hours with the emotional power of a romance in a floating shopping mall.
Absolutely Nothing to Do With the Money Answer
Janet Reno explained why the Justice Department filed suit to block Lockheed Martin’s acquisition of Northrop Grumman. With a bracingly nautical metaphor, the attorney general added that the merger of the two defense contractors would “cost taxpayers more and take the competitive wind out of the sails of innovation in the production of many critical systems that protect our fighting men and women.”
Disclaimer: All submissions will become the property of Slate and will be published at Slate’s discretion. Slate may publish your name on its site in connection with your submission.
