Posted by chicagomedia.org on May 13, 2009 at 15:54:40:
David Axelrod: 'Wait, wait, don't tell me'
by Mark Silva
Posted May 13, 2009 12:50 PM
David Axelrod, the political adviser who helped President Barack Obama get where he is today, will be speaking out of field tomorrow night. And people will be laughing.
It's OK. Obama has done it, too.
Axelrod, appearing on stage in Washington as the star guest of National Public Radio's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!, will attempt to answer questions about a job which he knows nothing about. That's the shtick for the "Not My Job'' segment of the popular quiz show, which will be taped Thursday night and air this weekend.
NPR says it has a full house for the show at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium.
Obama himself played this role in 2005, as a junior senator from Illinois. He was asked questions that superstitious baseball player Wade Boggs might field - and got all three questions right.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has played the game, asked about the habits of rock stars, U.S. Att'y Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago was quizzed about various types of scooters (get it?); and Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy fielded questions about child-rearing expert Dr. Spock (get that one?)
"Many people compare Mr. Axelrod to Karl Rove, but we think that Rove was smarter, as evidenced by the fact that Rove never agreed to come on our show," says Peter Sagal, host of Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me! "We've got lots of questions for Axelrod, but all of them involve finding out how and where the president is sneaking his cigarettes."