August 25, 2005

TIMES HUMOR: BOROWITZ REPORT

World tour to proceed as planned

One day after Madonna suffered a broken collarbone while riding a horse on her 47th birthday, scientists successfully cloned the music superstar to enable her upcoming world tour to proceed as planned.

While the platinum-selling recording artist was undergoing surgery for her injuries, samples of her DNA were dispatched to South Korea, where scientists successfully cloned a dog earlier this month.

At a press conference in Seoul, scientist Woo-Suk Hwang pronounced the cloning of the erstwhile “Material Girl” a total success.

“Our cloned Madonna has all of the same genetic characteristics of the original Madonna, and we expect to see her vogueing, getting into the groove, and letting her body move to the music in no time at all,” the Korean scientist said.

The successful cloning of Madonna was music to the ears of her tour promoters, who had briefly flirted with the idea of renaming her upcoming world tour “The Limited Neck Movement Tour ‘05.”

But the groundbreaking biological procedure drew some criticism in the scientific community, as some bioethicists said that the cloning of Madonna raised a host of thorny ethical issues.

“My greatest fear is, what happens if this technology falls into the wrong hands?” said Dr. Lindsay Prandell of the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Advanced Bioethics. “Most of us are fine with the cloning of Madonna, but what if a madman tried to clone Ryan Seacrest?”

Elsewhere, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that the new Iraqi constitution could hurt the insurgency if tons of copies of the constitution are dropped directly on the insurgents’ heads.

For more from Andy Borowitz go to www.borowitzreport.com. Andy Borowitz is a nationally syndicated humor columnist whose work can be found in Newsweek and other publications.