News Quiz

Weekend SpecialNo. 57: “Benched”

Weekend Special No. 57: “Benched”

By Randy Cohen

A Supreme Court decision this week means good news for Fox TV. How so?

by 5 p.m. ET Sunday to e-mail your answer (NewsQuiz@slate.com).

Responses to Wednesday’s question (No. 56)–“Memento”:

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

“Hair specimen; simply because it’s taking away valuable time from ‘stool sample.’ “–Bill Franzen

“A Michael Bolton handwriting sample, fingerprint, and hair specimen each fetched over $5,000 at a recent charity auction. The voice recording, of course, found no buyers.”–Andrew Solovay

“As if anyone under 25 would actually write anything by hand.”–Sam Coppersmith (Fritz Strohmeyer had a similar answer.)

“The hair specimen is the only thing that would make a grizzled, veteran police detective say, ‘I’m sorry, I’d rather let that sicko off than touch that curly thing (shudder). Icch.’ “–Danny Spiegel

“You don’t test the hair specimen until the second date.”–Beth Sherman

“OK. This is really, really, really getting weird. What doesn’t belong is ‘handwriting sample.’ It’s the only thing I didn’t have to give the usher at my local Cineplex Odeon on the day I finally broke down and went to see My Giant.”–Jon Hotchkiss

Click for more responses.

Randy’s Wrap-Up

The tragedy of the special prosecutor’s thin-lipped rampage is the way he turns normal human behavior into something indecent. I’ve never felt more perverse simply for having asked someone for a lock of hair. All right, that “someone” was CBS newsman Morley Safer, and by “asked” I mean crept up on him with a pair of scissors while he was asleep, and by “asleep” I mean spread-eagled in the trunk of my car with his wrists and ankles bound in duct tape. Oh, wait; that wasn’t me. And even if it was, what would it have to do with a series of dubious bank loans?

Physically Evident Answer

As you all know, so take the rest of the day off, Monica Lewinsky agreed to deliver a handwriting sample, fingerprint, and voice recording to the Los Angeles office of the FBI, complying with investigators’ requests.

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

“It’s an outrageous claim that firemen are going there because models are living there. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to check for oily rags at Victoria’s Secret.”–Frank Gribbon, New York Fire Department spokesman, on why his men inspected an Elite Models dormitory seven times in eight weeks

“It turns religion into a kind of supermarket, where you go shopping for the most interesting religion. And by the way, we’ve got plenty of parking and free balloons for the kids.”–Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, on the dangers of proselytizing

“We are cleaning out the four-year colleges and putting remediation where it belongs. Behind the counter at McDonald’s.”–Ann Paolucci, head of the board of trustees of New York’s City University, on why it’s a great thing to keep poor folks out of college

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