Scientists Successfully Clone Human

Today Show anchor Katie Couric replaced by self


Katie Couric

Katie Couric Clone

In a stunning development that directly contradicts the age-old edict that reporters should report the news and not create it, NBC’s Today Show has managed to pull off a headline-grabbing, ratings-saving double play: replacing departing co-anchor Katie Couric with herself through the first-ever human cloning project.

Three months ago, the infinitely popular Couric shocked the broadcasting world with her announcement to leave the most successful morning news program in the history of civilized man for the barren wasteland of the CBS Evening News, the stench of Dan Rather’s Old Spice still heavy in the air.

Facing a potential storming of the gates by angry, Swiffer-bearing, pabulum-devouring housewives the world over, NBC executives quickly sprang into action, convening the top authorities in genetics engineering. A few hairs from a hairbrush, a used Kleenex and a chewed piece of Wrigley’s Spearmint later, the world’s first human clone was created—ready to start reading cue cards and dishing witty improvisational banter with the show’s other anchor, that adorable scamp, Matt Lauer.

While certainly a milestone worth making headlines, once the Couric clone took to the airwaves several flaws in the cloning process became evident.

For some reason, the Couric clone appears decidedly older than the original. Experts think this could be the result of the gene known as 473-H, or the “aging” gene, being placed a rung too high along the DNA double helix. Or it could just be an allergic reaction to the heavy pancake makeup used by the irrepressibly coy Lauer.

Also, the clone has shown a definite lack of the perkiness for which the original Couric was so well known. (Editor’s note: perkiness experts at the U.S. Cheerleading Institute in Des Moines, Iowa have concluded that no mere mortal should ever realistically expect to attain the lofty heights on the Perkiness Scale that Couric enjoyed. Anyone attempting to reach those levels would be risking blindness, sterility and even the jimmy leg.) NBC has admitted to being marginally distressed at first, but daily injections of a synthetic perkiness substitute seem to have worked to create at least a temporary forced perkiness while geneticists continue to peer into microscopes, analyze data and debate whether Captain Kirk could kick Captain Pickard’s ass.

For the time being, the clone appears to be holding its own despite the aforementioned shortcomings. It has managed to master the pun-laden segment segues with weatherman Al Roker, it has proven particularly adept at being able to hold a smile for three solid hours and it has been able to sit beside Ann Curry without succumbing to the natural instinct of ripping her head off and tossing it into the Achy Breaky crowd at the Billy Ray Cyrus concert rocking on the plaza.

So for now, the experiment seems to have been a success. Partly because of the scientific breakthroughs prompted by the apocalyptic visions of a Today Show without America’s Head Cheerleader. But mostly because people would rather watch a creepy pseudo Katie Couric-like substance on a bastardized Today Show than an all-too-real Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America. Whoever in the hell that guy is.