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 Paula Poundstone, Tom Bodett and Kyrie O'Connor. And here again is your host, at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, Texas, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Carl. Thank you everybody. In just a minute, in our listener limerick challenge, Carl plays tribute to his favorite Dallas Cowboy, quarterback Tony Rhyme-o.
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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, it's time for you to answer some questions about this week's news.
Tom, we first heard about the Pakistani town of Abbottabad when the CIA discovered that was where Osama bin Laden was hiding out. Well, the town is trying to move on from that shame by doing what?
TOM BODETT: They've opened up a theme park, Abbottabad Land.
SAGAL: That's exactly right.
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SAGAL: They're going to open up an amusement park.
BODETT: You can't make this stuff up fast enough.
SAGAL: Apparently.
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SAGAL: What do you do...
BODETT: I guessed.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: Were you kidding?
BODETT: I was guessing. I was making it up because I didn't know the answer.
KYRIE O'CONNOR: Oh, geez.
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SAGAL: Yeah, you were right.
POUNDSTONE: I thought, because it's Abbottabad, I thought they were going to change their name to Abbottgood.
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SAGAL: What do you do if you're the place famous as where the most wanted mass murderer in the modern world hid for years, completely unnoticed. Build an amusement park.
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SAGAL: It worked so well for Berlin, where Hitler Land has been such a hit.
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SAGAL: Maybe they need to use their moment of fame as the theme for the amusement park. Welcome to Osama World, where you can go on rides like Zero Dark Thrilly.
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SAGAL: Or try waterslideboarding.
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SAGAL: It's an enhanced recreational technique.
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SAGAL: And the great thing is at the end of every ride, you can buy a grainy videotape of yourself to send to Al-Jazeera.
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POUNDSTONE: I always wondered, every time they got - like whenever there was, you know, a film from bin Laden, they would always say, well, we got it from Al-Jazeera. And I always thought that a good CIA technique would be to ask the people at Al-Jazeera where they got it.
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POUNDSTONE: Yeah, as soon as the Senate confirmation hearings start having a part where they have tweeted questions from the citizens.
SAGAL: You're going to say...
POUNDSTONE: I'm going to send that one in I think.
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O'CONNOR: Well, you know what's really bothered me about these Senate hearings all week is they keep talking about these extra judicial killings right. Well, extra judicial sounds like it would be like a really good thing, you know like...
SAGAL: It's not judicial; it's extra judicial.
O'CONNOR: Yes, it's extra.
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O'CONNOR: But see that's - it's not like extra crispy.
SAGAL: No.
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BODETT: Although it can be that too, apparently.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SAGAL: Kyrie, John Kerry is now our secretary of state. Good luck to him. And he says that unlike his predecessor, he will tweet personally. One problem though, what?
O'CONNOR: One problem is he doesn't have a device that he could tweet on. No?
SAGAL: Yes, he'll just be shouting.
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SAGAL: Hash tag diplomacy. What? No.
O'CONNOR: I need a hint.
SAGAL: You'll need a hint. Well, it's how he's going to sign them.
O'CONNOR: Oh, JK.
SAGAL: JK, exactly. He's going to sign his tweets JK.
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SAGAL: JK is John Kerry's initials, of course, but it's also the common abbreviation on twitter and email for "just kidding."
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SAGAL: Just kidding, which by coincidence was the official slogan of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.
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BODETT: I have a hard time imagining him saying anything in 140 characters or less too.
SAGAL: Yeah, I know.
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POUNDSTONE: I have a hard time imagining him kidding.
SAGAL: I know.
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SAGAL: Well that's the thing, it's like no matter what he's saying, it'll seem like he's ending it with just kidding. So it'll be like North Korea has just launched a nuclear weapon. Oh no. JK. Oh, good. Wait, oh no.
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O'CONNOR: Does he not have a middle name? Why can't he just use - well he could just use three initials, problem solved.
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SAGAL: I'll let him know.
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SAGAL: Or we, the rest of the world, could start saying John Kerry instead of just kidding. So it would be like, man that dress makes you look awfully fat, John Kerry.
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BODETT: I've lived my life with the initials TB, so I sympathize.
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POUNDSTONE: Let me tell you something, PAP hasn't been easy.
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SAGAL: Yeah, that is a smear, Paula. I don't...
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
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