BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We're playing this week with P.J. O'Rourke, Mo Rocca and Faith Salie. And here again is your host, filling in for Peter Sagal at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Mike Pesca.
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MIKE PESCA, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. In just a minute, Bill dresses up as Little Red Rhyming Hood in the Listener Limerick Challenge. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. But right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Mo.
MO ROCCA: Yes?
PESCA: According to recently released documents, the Chinese government wants to promote a, quote, "harmonious, socialist society" by doing what?
ROCCA: They want to create a harmonious, socialist society.
PESCA: Yeah. It's like a Yelp for humans.
ROCCA: Will, Yelp is for humans.
PESCA: It's a Yelp...
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PESCA: It's a Yelp where the object of the rating is humans.
ROCCA: Oh, OK. The object - oh, so they want people to be rated.
PESCA: Yes, they want to rate all their citizens on a scale of one to 10.
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ROCCA: Oh, I think that's OK.
FAITH SALIE: Wait, that's what Donald Trump does except it's - one to - yeah, one to 10.
P J O'ROURKE: That's only half of the citizens that he does one to 10.
PESCA: Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, and there's an age cutoff for the elderly. It's 29.
O'ROURKE: We're really talking about only about a quarter of the population. China wants to do it to everybody.
PESCA: So China, which has long been known for hard-line policies from the recently abandoned one-child rule to the still active law requiring every citizen to refer to smog as chokey fun clouds.
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PESCA: This new proposal would collect personal information from every citizen, so it would include social media, it would include their credit habits, it would include their family history, and it would assign a rating of one to 10. And it - this would be - what they would call it is trustworthiness.
ROCCA: Everybody will have a cumulative score basically, a final score, right, based on all these things.
PESCA: Yes, yes, yes, right.
SALIE: Talent, swimsuit...
O'ROURKE: Can you imagine all the...
ROCCA: Exactly.
O'ROURKE: ...All the Chinese television commercials, late-night television commercials about, like, your score? Come to us, you know, and we will fix your - oh, boy.
SALIE: You - didn't you judge a Miss Universe or Miss America or something?
ROCCA: I judged a Miss USA, yes.
SALIE: A Miss USA.
ROCCA: Yeah.
SALIE: How did it feel to wield the power to give someone a score that could change her life?
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ROCCA: Well, it felt like my destiny. It felt natural to have that power.
PESCA: P.J., the women's style magazine Vogue is recommending that this Halloween, instead of candy, you hand out what?
O'ROURKE: Oh, my God, jewelry.
PESCA: When you get - here's a hint.
O'ROURKE: Yeah, I need a hint here.
PESCA: When you get home, you can make borscht.
O'ROURKE: Your hand out beets.
PESCA: You hand out beets, yes.
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O'ROURKE: You hand out beets.
PESCA: Chef...
O'ROURKE: I hope you don't have a white house...
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O'ROURKE: ...When you hand out beets on Halloween 'cause I know what I'd do with a beet (laughter)...
PESCA: Yeah.
O'ROURKE: ...When I come around in my Mike Pence costume.
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ROCCA: Oh, for Halloween, I want to create a Pence dispenser to give to kids to put little candies in there.
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ROCCA: Because his head - he would make a good - he would make a good Pence dispenser.
PESCA: Yeah, the - everything he dispenses would be immediately contradicted by Donald Trump, but that's OK. He's stand by it. Here's the - here's some of the facts behind the genius of giving kids beets for Halloween.
O'ROURKE: Yeah, this needs some explaining.
SALIE: Are these raw beets or candied beets?
PESCA: Well, Chef Marcel Vigneron recommended to readers of Vogue that they put baby beets in their food dehydrator for an effect that is, quote, "like a sweet, vegetable, gummy candy so you don't feel guilty about eating it." Oh, this guy - you're right, this guy's going to get it worse than the dentist who hands out toothbrushes.
O'ROURKE: I know. Send this guy to China. We'll see what his rating is.
(LAUGHTER) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.