KATIE COURIC last night underwent her second on-air colonoscopy.
Watching the procedure was not a horribly painful event. Nor was it an experience I would volunteer to repeat any time soon.
For her very first night as CBS News diva, Katie spent a half-hour looking as if she desperately had to go potty. Her back was so stiff as she looked into the camera, pop-eyed and self-conscious, I feared it would snap.
Her face was Botoxed beyond normal human endurance, proving that even pampered, overpaid news babes possess the courage to suffer for their art.
And for the first time in history that a female was allowed to deliver a network's evening news alone, Katie chose to wear an unfortunate white blazer - the result, no doubt, of some jokester lying to her face when Katie asked, "Does this make me look fat?"
And the day after Labor Day, to boot!
For this they pay her a reported $15 million a year?
The best that can be said about Katie Couric was that she did not trip over her 5-inch stiletto heels when she toddled across the floor of the set, crossing her bare legs like some ridiculous tramp.
The worst that can be said about Katie is that she did not fall flat on her face - which would have provided a much-needed break in the tension.
Western civilization did not exactly end last night as Katie took to the anchor chair. But the changing of the guard did represent another kind of cultural change.
As of yesterday, network TV has proven it no longer feels the need to pretend that its nightly news broadcast is sober stuff, populated by earnest men and women with serious reporting backgrounds and working blow-dryers.
It was not just Katie's legs. Or her clothes. Or her unnervingly high-pitched and overmodulated voice, more appropriate for a weather girl in Tampa than a national broadcaster. It was all these things together - and more. At the end of the show, Katie struggled with how she should sign off. She played clips of Walter Cronkite intoning, "That's the way it is." And Dan Rather ending his broadcast with "Courage."
But then, she played Ted Knight as bumbling Ted Baxter in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." And Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy in "Anchorman."
It was supposed to be funny.
Trouble is, those fake guys were better anchors than Katie was last night.
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