What Katie did: gob-smacking

Here is America's first solo female evening news anchor, Katie Couric. She has seen her ratings slide precipitously, so is rather high-strung these days. The NY Post reports her slap-happy reaction to a medical term slipped into her script for the nightly news. According to New York Magazine's Joe Hagen, the network star playfully bitch-slapped one of the show's writers for including the word "sputum" in a report about tuberculosis. “I sort of slapped him around,” Couric admits, referring to Jerry Cipriano, a news editor.

Well, "sputum" is more specific than the post-AIDS catch-all term for the squeamish: "bodily fluids". What made Couric so spitting mad about this particular term? Was it the pronunciation? That she would have to share the set with a reference to nasty gunk being coughed up? The news tells us about the world in all its nastiness. Katie, get over it.