PETER SAGAL, host: Right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Amy, New York subway riders have to suffer endless recorded announcements asking them to be patient because of delays or breakdowns or maintenance on the tracks. Well, the MTA has solved the problem. They will no long do what?
AMY DICKINSON: They will no longer stop for fires.
SAGAL: No.
DICKINSON: They're just going to press on.
SAGAL: No.
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DICKINSON: No. They're no longer...
SAGAL: They could either fix the delays that they're thanking people for their patience for.
DICKINSON: Right. They're no longer going to thank people for their patience.
SAGAL: Exactly right.
DICKINSON: Yeah.
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SAGAL: Well, specifically, they're no longer going to ask people for their patience. If you've ridden the subway in New York, you've heard it. The PA comes on and says we are being held temporarily. Please be patient. After ten years of commuters threatening to disembowel the disembodied voice, the MTA is finally replacing it with a prerecorded apology, because that's when you know an apology is sincere, when it's prerecorded.
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SAGAL: We apologize for whatever horrible screwed up experience you're going through here in the past. We don't know what it is, but we're pretty sure it's going to happen.
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DICKINSON: That's what Herman Cain said.
SAGAL: Exactly.
TOM BODETT: Right.
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SAGAL: Pretty much. Now we actually thought that this idea of prerecorded preemptive apologies was a good one, so we actually created some. These are some that many of you might find useful. Here they are.
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SAGAL: Or maybe a different kind of social situation.
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SAGAL: I need that all the time. I should make that my ring tone. And here's one we made just for you.
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SAGAL: There you go.
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SAGAL: We're all friends now, right? Amy, Detroit is a city fallen on hard times. Its citizens have had enough. After enduring unemployment and urban blight for years, this week they banded together in droves to keep what scourge out of the city?
DICKINSON: Well, WAIT WAIT's going there, so it's...
SAGAL: Yes.
DICKINSON: That didn't work out.
SAGAL: No, they couldn't stop us but they're trying to stop somebody else.
DICKINSON: Right.
SAGAL: You might have heard this. It actually pertains to the football game they're going to play on Thanksgiving.
DICKINSON: Play on Thanksgiving.
CHARLIE PIERCE: They play a game on Thanksgiving every year.
DICKINSON: Okay.
PIERCE: In Detroit, it's a tradition.
DICKINSON: Oh, okay. I didn't know.
PIERCE: Yeah.
SAGAL: Does that...
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DICKINSON: I got nothing.
PIERCE: So, presuming they're not going to keep the football game out.
DICKINSON: Yeah, the halftime show.
SAGAL: Yes.
DICKINSON: Something about it.
PIERCE: It's whoever the band is, and I can't remember who it is.
SAGAL: Well, does anybody know? Tom, do you know?
BODETT: Would it be Bob Seeger?
SAGAL: No. They like Bob Seeger in Detroit.
BODETT: Yeah, no...
SAGAL: No, it's the band Nickelback.
PIERCE: Yeah.
BODETT: Oh.
SAGAL: If you want to know how bad the generic corporate rock band Nickelback is, just Google "Nickelback rocks" and the first link is a YouTube video of someone pelting Nickelback with rocks.
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SAGAL: So Detroiters, more then 50,000 of them have signed a petition demanding the band be uninvited from playing the halftime show at the nationally televised Lions Thanksgiving Day game. The worry, and it's a very real worry, is that instead of associating Detroit with rampant crime, corruption and the collapse of American industry, the city will instead be associated with Nickelback.
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(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.