News Quiz

No. 56: “Memento”

No. 56: “Memento”

By Randy Cohen

Handwriting sample, fingerprint, voice recording, hair specimen. Which does not belong? Why?

by noon ET Thursday to e-mail your answer (NewsQuiz@slate.com).

Responses to Monday’s question (No. 55)–“Small, Small World”:

Thanks to a deal with Future TV, Disney characters will do something they’ve never done before. What?

“Unionize.”–Tim Carvell

“Take over ABC News. What? Really? Oh, never mind.”–Sam Coppersmith

“Be funny?”–Larry Doyle (Martin Orenstein had an identical answer, save for the modest question mark.)

“Enjoy the rich, smooth taste of low-tar cigarettes.”–Danny Spiegel

“Mate with Hanna-Barbera characters, through an innovation in cartooning known as Misceg-a-Mation.”–Meg Wolitzer

“Refuse to sign a contract until they get a bigger back end.”–Patty Marx

“Reach directly into a parent’s wallet while they’re sitting watching television. No toys to buy, no going to the store–just take the cash. Oh–they’ll be really funny and charming while they do it. Kids will love it!”–Fred Graver

“Performing certain acts a geriatric Supreme Court still permits that ludicrous political entity the state of Georgia to criminalize, in a very violent, nonconsensual manner on the Jumbotron in Times Square, honey.”–David Rakoff and Ignatz Ratzkiwatzky

(For more cartoon pornography, see the Animated Erotica Annex on.–Ed.)

“The new deal calls for them to be dubbed into Arabic, broadcast in Lebanon, and requires they demand the immediate destruction of Israel.”–Beth Sherman

Click for more responses.

Randy’s Wrap-Up

From the exotic animal corpses in Florida to the famous banned poster of the 1960s depicting them in drug-addled sexual debauchery … no, wait … I was thinking of the Republican National Committee. And anyhow, that dream is between me and my therapist. OK–Disney. Beyond the right-wing politics, the soul-crushing blandness, the prizing of the artificial over the actual, what is creepiest about Disney is a kind of thuggish aesthetic that compels you to respond a particular way at a particular time. Your reaction is not only anticipated, it’s required. At each spot on each ride, on every street of their planned communities, at every moment in every movie, the Disney Imagineers know exactly how you are meant to respond. Spontaneity out. Surprise out. Liveliness and vitality out. Wallets out, please, we’re coming to another gift shop. And can’t they do something about those lines?

It’s a Small, Small Answer

Speak Arabic, as Beth Sherman knew. While Disney cartoons have run with Arabic subtitles, they will be dubbed into Arabic for the first time on the Beirut station widely viewed throughout the Middle East, which is owned by Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri.

Augmented Quotations (final sentence added by “News Quiz”)

“This became an issue of safety, not censorship. And I’m sure the cardinal will back me up on that.”–Lynne Meadow, artistic director of the Manhattan Theatre Club, explaining why she canceled Terrence McNally’s new play after receiving complaints from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, as well as anonymous threats of violence

“New Jersey’s place in history shouldn’t be questioned by anybody. Or they’ll be damned to hell for all eternity, right, cardinal?”–Gov. Christine Todd Whitman on the Supreme Court’s finding that Ellis Island is a part of New Jersey

“I don’t know if you want to go to the bathroom and have people say, ‘Is that you in there?’ Or perhaps you do, cardinal.”–Oprah Winfrey on the terrible price of fame.

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