News Quiz

No. 345: “Riotous Assembly With Cheese”

Cheering demonstrators gathered outside a Seattle McDonald’s Monday. Why?

Send your answer by noon ET Wednesday to newsquiz@slate.com.

Monday’s Question (No. 344)–“Futurific”:

“If I’m president, it won’t happen for a long time. If I’m not, it will happen immediately.” Who said this about what?

“Alan Keyes; the Apocalypse.”–Mary Anne Townsend (Michael C Doyle and Floyd Elliot had similar answers.)

“George W. Bush; the Southern states seceding from the Union.”–Marshall Efron

“Pat Buchanan; the Mexican-Canadian military alliance that will leave America humbled and enslaved.”–Floyd Elliot

“Jimmy Carter; return of hostages from Iran.”–Dan Dickinson

“Al Gore, explaining just when he plans to set off those sarin gas capsules he’s carefully hidden around the country during his eight years as vice president. Do what he says, people! He’s got nothing to lose!”–Tim Carvell

Click for more answers.

Randy’s Wrap-Up

Many responses cast Donald Trump not as a genuine womanizer, able to exploit his transient sexual partners on his own merits, but as a pseudo-womanizer whose consorts see him as a sort of moon-faced paycheck.

But perhaps his sexual boasting, while delightfully buffoonish, is a minor crime. Rigorous self-awareness is rarely found in bed where people will tell you just about any damn thing. It is a setting that conspires against self-knowledge: the soft lights, the kind words, the shape-flattering diaphanous teddy that, frankly, wouldn’t hurt Trump’s whole look. But despite the generous spiritedness of News Quiz participants, Trump remains the perfect Molière fool, supremely confident of his splendor, supremely unaware that to everyone else he’s a cartoon, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme with a bad haircut. But big where it counts–in the wallet.

When Fatuity Turns to Madness Answer

Donald Trump said this about the collapse of the stock market.

Apparently, the ongoing bull market can sustain itself for one more year, right up until the presidential election, at which time, if Trump wins, prosperity continues, but if he loses, the bottom drops out. In making this prediction to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Trump declined to release details of either the economic theory or the satanic pact that would make this scenario possible.

Talk Magazine Deathwatch Extra

Which of the following are actual Tina Brown rationalizations for her magazine’s slide into darkness (quoted by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski), and which are amusing digs at a debased editorial philosophy built around fawning over celebrity?

1. “It takes time for a magazine to establish its identity.”

2. “Tough for a print magazine to vie with Internet’s ability to deliver the crass and shallow.”

3. “All Gwyneth All The Time format less popular than Harvey Weinstein promised.”

4. “It’s taken time to organize our approach to Hollywood.”

5. “Still shifting from old editorial policy of uncritical worship of Hollywood celebrities to new policy of enthusiastic groveling before Hollywood celebrities.”

6. “I should not be absorbed in reading six drafts of an article, which is what I have been doing, which has been my dilemma.”

7. “I should send an assistant out to buy me one of those dictionary things and then get someone to look up ‘dilemma’ for me.”

8. “Gwyneth wouldn’t pose with the donkey.”

9. “When I saw the success of the first issue, it was a crazy wonderful thing, but I knew our staff was too small.”

10. “We need to make news and break news about Gwyneth Paltrow, and that means looking for stories with a lot of journalistic calories. By which I do not mean that Gwyneth Paltrow is fat. She’s that other thing. Thin.”

Answers

1, 4, 6, 9, and the first sentence of 10 minus the words “about Gwyneth Paltrow” are true Tinaisms.

Ongoing Autobio Extra

Participants are invited–heck, encouraged; prodded even–to submit the title of a much-needed but as yet unwritten autobiography of any national political figure lacking this essential election-year tool. Answers to run Thursday.

Common Denominator

Trump the pseudo-womanizer; Clinton the real thing.