Don’t You Wish We Could All Try The Katie Couric Diet?

Want to lose about 20 pounds? Just contact CBS’ photo department and they’ll take care of it. That’s what they did for Katie Couric. A picture in a CBS magazine promoting her move to CBS news was altered to make her appear thinner.

The photo has been a surprise to almost everyone involved. The President of CBS News was surprised, as was Couric, although she’s handling it perfectly. When told about her photo’s alteration she responded, “I liked the first picture better because there’s more of me to love.” What a great disarming response. In one sentence, she tells us that she’s ok with the way she is. After that, it’s not even news anymore. If she were upset by it then there’d be a story.

All of this got me thinking about how we can engage in a little revisionist history. As you know, we have an obesity problem in this country. Thanks to digital photo manipulation, we can ensure that historians remember Americans differently, or remember less of us, if you get my point.

The first area to concentrate on is our political leaders. We can easily airbrush about 40 pounds off President Clinton and Senator Ted Kennedy. We can make Governor Schwarzenegger still appear muscular and Terminator-like. The same can be applied to any television personality. After all, if the television adds 10 pounds, let’s remove it. We can virtually eliminate the double chin from our historical photographic records. The same goes for the beer gut. The possibilities are endless. Heck, if George Lucas can make a young Yoda do flips and wield a light saber, we can skinny up our citizens.

Imagine sending out your Christmas card photo this year with every member of your family looking fit and trim. Of course, with a little knowledge of Photoshop, you can take it a step further and make it look like Fred Willard, Phyllis Diller, Adam West as Batman, Barry Williams or any other A-list celebrity attended your family function. You can even make it look like you went sport fishing with President Bush (or both of them) off the coast of Maine. Didn’t get to take that trip to Hawaii this year? That’s ok; you can make it look like you did and that you lost 35 pounds while you were there.

If we take advantage of this photo-cheating thing correctly, we can appear to future generations as a society of blemish free, fit and well-traveled people, despite our Big Mac a day habit. The only problem will be when those future generations actually get to meet us. Yes my friends, a picture truly is worth a thousand words, even if they are all lies.