A Katie Couric/Matt Lauer mad-lib

I was never a big fan of mad libs, but Katie Couric and Matt Lauer gave us all an opportunity to play the mad lib game with their Thanksgiving day Macy's parade broadcast. The following is the Breitbart account of NBC's failure to mention the balloon that went off course and injured two bystanders:

During its live coverage of the [1] annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, NBC did not tell viewers that [2] a giant balloon had caught on a street lamp and injured two sisters.

At the point in the broadcast when [3] the "M&M's Chocolate Candies" balloon was supposed to have crossed the finish line, announcers Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Al Roker stuck close to their scripts and the network ran footage of [4] the balloon from last year's parade.

emphasis and numbers added

One can replace the highlighted portions with the following phrases, and the story would be equally true. The numbers on the list below correspond with the numbers in the parade story above.

1. war
election
economy


2. thousands of terrorists have been killed
Democratic candidate committed a gaffe
the leading economic indicators were up for the sixth months in a row


3. something positive happened in Iraq
the Democrats were imploding
the stock market was rallying


4. Cindy Sheehan
Vietnam
some homeless person


Just pick the items from the numbered list above and insert them into their proper place in the parade story. I will try to think of more examples later.