NBC Issues Apology

NBC Today Show producer Jeff Zucker read an on-air apology this morning after the show, and the entire network, failed to embellish any news items the entire day yesterday.

"We at the Today Show pride ourselves on our ability to muckrake with the best of them," said a contrite Zucker. "Yesterday, we did not live down to the low standards that we set for ourselves, and that our viewers have come to expect from us. As producer, I take full responsibility for this oversight. To make it up to our audience, this afternoon, departing Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge will kidnap Katie Couric's two guinea pigs and will hold them for ransom at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where police will try to talk Ridge down using a combination of tough love and promises of a guinea pig of his very own. Ridge will refuse, and will escape with Mexican president Vicente Fox's daughter to a Chilean hideout, where he will demand an interview with Tom Brokaw within forty-eight hours. Brokaw will decline, and Ridge will settle for Sanjay Gupta, who will wear a silly bulletproof vest and will pause from time to time to remind the viewing public of the dangers of food, America's number-one killer. There may or may not be a Dateline special immediately following the affair, which will glorify Ridge's crimes and insinuate that it is much better to be a criminal on TV than to be a law-abiding citizen in obscurity. Katie Couric will feed Democratic pundits leading questions throughout the entire day, and will make several inane and vapid comments at the top and bottom of each hour. You will not want to miss this, folks. It will be an NBC exclusive--we may even have to preempt "Dimwitted Fame-hounds Gagging themselves on Bugs and Guts" in order to bring you continuing coverage of the hostage crisis as it unfolds. Again, we are deeply sorry for our mistake."

After the apology, Couric asked Zucker, "Do you think, Mr. Zucker, that this could be a Republican plot to murder Cuban children and sell missiles to New Zealand in exchange for a blood-for-oil deal with the devil?"

Zucker shook his head ominously and said, "If only it wasn't, Katie. If only it wasn't."