CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. We're playing this week with Amy Dickinson, Tom Bodett and Paula Poundstone. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Carl.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Thank you, Carl. In just a minute, Carl selects Nantucket in the first round of the National Limerick League Draft.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-Wait-Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924. Right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news.
Tom, the fallout is continuing from the Secret Service scandal, with various investigations going on, firings, resignations happening seemingly every day. Sources say at least two of the accused agents might be innocent of cavorting with prostitutes. What is their excuse?
TOM BODETT: They found a late night bingo game. No.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BODETT: Can I have a hint?
SAGAL: Well, it wasn't that they weren't willing, they weren't able.
BODETT: Oh, they were passed out drunk.
SAGAL: They were passed out drunk. The idea is that two of the agents involved...
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
BODETT: It isn't very often you get to use that as an excuse.
SAGAL: Exactly.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Their excuse was they were too drunk. So no worries, they did not sacrifice their morals or the security of their mission because they were plastered.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: They were just playing the old Secret Service drinking game in which you drink until you're protecting two presidents.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: I'll dive in front of the one on the left.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So these two, I guess, can go back to their jobs protecting the president, but they will have to remove their novelty t-shirts reading "Colombian Party Cartel."
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Also, one of the agents told investigators, yes, he did take a prostitute back to his hotel room, but he did not know that she was a prostitute until she asked for money. Isn't this guy the real threat to national security?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Isn't obliviousness grounds to lose your security clearance? It's like "Agent Smith, why did you let that would-be assassin get so close to you and the president?" He's like, "I thought she just really liked me."
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: By the way, Thursday of this week was take your child to work day. So the State Department spokesman had to answer questions about the scandal in front of all these kids who were there with their parents.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: No.
SAGAL: It's, like, parents had to explain what they were talking about later. It's like, you see, honey, when a man loves a woman very much and the woman takes major credit cards, well...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Thursday was take your kid to work day?
SAGAL: Yes.
POUNDSTONE: Oh, I feel awful.
SAGAL: You forgot.
POUNDSTONE: I didn't bring my kids to work.
BODETT: I work at home.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BODETT: Every day is take your kid to work day.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
BODETT: I can't get them out of there.
SAGAL: Paula, a German police force recently updated their fleet with 800 - 800 - new sleek, sporty patrol cars. One problem though, what?
POUNDSTONE: The 800 sleek, sporty patrol cars. Let's see, they were the shifty kind and nobody knows how to drive those.
SAGAL: No.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: I'll give you a hint. You know the thing where the cops do where they push people's heads down to fit them into the cars?
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
SAGAL: Maybe they can do that to themselves.
POUNDSTONE: They can't fit in them.
SAGAL: Right, they can't fit in the cars.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: The cops can't. The new Opel patrol car is a sporty wagon with sporty bucket seats, but many German policemen do not have sporty chassis.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Even if they did, they can't fit in the seats when they're wearing their equipment belts with all their stuff. Nobody bothered to check before they spent the $33 million on the new cars.
AMY DICKINSON: That does not sound very German to me.
SAGAL: The bad news is they've wasted all this money. The good news is they've taken a blow against the stereotype for being smart and efficient.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: There you go.
BODETT: You know what kind of car you're going to be renting when you go to Germany now.
DICKINSON: A nice little Opel.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIREN)
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: There's a solution. Larger cops, or in German, Der Grosse Copper...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Can simply arrest themselves so they can ride in the back.
Amy, despite apologizing, three British tourists who were visiting Australia are facing charges after allegedly doing what during a drunken night on the town?
DICKINSON: They really did go waltzing with Matilda.
SAGAL: They did not go waltzing with Matilda.
DICKINSON: With a kangaroo?
SAGAL: No. Maybe they thought they were like freeing a small nun from a convent.
DICKINSON: Oh, it involves a penguin.
SAGAL: It does. They kidnapped a penguin.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
DICKINSON: Oh, I hate that.
SAGAL: Anyone can wake up from a bender, next to a strange woman.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Or man, I guess, but it takes a true champion of binge drinking to wake up next to a flightless seabird named Dirk.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: No.
SAGAL: The men claim they have no memory of breaking into Sea World, swimming with the dolphins and then stealing the penguin, who, once again, is named Dirk, Dirk the Penguin.
DICKINSON: Oh no.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: For his part, Dirk says he wouldn't have gone with them, but he was pretty wasted himself.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Adding, "You think I'd walk like this if I was sober?"
DICKINSON: No. Was Dirk OK?
SAGAL: Dirk is totally fine. They were like, oh my god, we got a penguin. On my god, we got to bring it back. So they brought it back. They left it, like, near a shark-infested pool, which was not cool. But fine, Dirk the Penguin is fine. And then they would have gotten away with it, but they bragged about it on Facebook.
DICKINSON: Ohh.
POUNDSTONE: Ohh.
SAGAL: Yeah.
DICKINSON: Wow.
SAGAL: There's a lesson for you. If you get drunk, steal a penguin and bring it back, before you're caught, don't brag about it on Facebook.
DICKINSON: Yeah.
BODETT: How do you stay quiet about something like that?
DICKINSON: Truly, really.
SAGAL: Honestly.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: You can't. It's totally worth whatever happens, because now the world knows.
POUNDSTONE: Why, is that illegal?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BODETT: Why do you ask, Paula?
SAGAL: Yeah. Paula, do you have to run home real quick? Why do you ask?
POUNDSTONE: I just got to make a call.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.