News Quiz

No. 168: “East/East”

“We’ve been made the butt of a joke in New York–on television, in the newspapers. We take it not as funny but as something very serious.” Who said this about what?

by 5 p.m. ET Monday to e-mail your answer to newsquiz@slate.com.

Monday’s question (No. 167)–“East/West”:

Fill in the blank. Bernard Salick’s entrepreneurial ideas may play in California, but they’ll never make it in New York, says Warren Enker: “Not too many people want ____________ at 4 a.m., so it’s not that great a gimmick.”

“Mr. Salick to tell them they’re pretty … and smart, too.”–Jennifer Miller

“To be killed by a former pro athlete simply because you decided to return some designer eye wear to a pretty, young divorcee.”–Tim Carvell

Us magazine: Books on Tape.”–Larry Amaros

“A cheese-fondue-bearing Joan Didion at their front door.”–David Rakoff

“Greased up, shiny little Sushi Boy, in his shiny little sequined shorty-shorts.”–Molly Shearer Gabel

Click for more responses.

Randy’s Wrap-Up

That several jokes about California cuisine mention cilantro is unexceptional (click). That many jokes about California’s erotic life mention enemas is disconcerting. Are we 5 years old? Are we English? Are we meat and potatoes men who never get near fresh fruits or vegetables? No, we’re not. We’re constantly frolicking about in all that damn cilantro. We Californians apparently do little else. We eat eccentric meals and enjoy sex and drugs with our film business colleagues, all of whom look fabulous courtesy of the surgeon’s art. And if technically cilantro is neither fruit nor vegetable, that’s the least of my classification problems. Is a Gabor sister sex, food, lifestyle, or something more sinister? Is a liberal president the one who makes the biggest increase in defense spending in a decade, restricts habeas corpus, guts the protections of immigration law, and sends weapons to the Colombian army? Taxonomy is exhausting. I could use a cup of cilantro coffee.

Ontological Answer

Radiation.

With cancer likely to pass cardiovascular disease as the nation’s No. 1 one killer, many hospitals are vying for cancer patients, offering treatments still aloof from the financial restraints of managed care. Dr. Bernard Salick’s chain of 24 for-profit cancer clinics has done well in California, making flexible schedules a part of its patient-friendly approach, but Dr. Warren Enker, associate director of New York’s Beth Israel Hospital, remains skeptical.

(Editor’s note: No response exploited the suffering of anyone afflicted with a dreadful disease; all targeted profit-making medicine, California foolishness and, of course, the surviving Gabor sisters, should there be any.)

Implausible Assertions Extra

Match the hard-to-swallow statement with the speaker who managed to get the words out without laughing.

Statements

1. “I enjoy his company. I just think he’s a hell of a guy.”

2. “It’s one of our favorite ways of relaxing.”

3. “Seductively appealing.”

Speakers

A. Hillary Clinton, on hanging out with her husband, reading about the Jacksonian era in America

B. John McCain, on hanging out with Rudolph Giuliani

C. Stephen Holden, on hanging out at Star Trek: Insurrection

Answers

1B, 2A, 3C.

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