LAURA BUSH to HAVE IDIOTIC SMILE SURGICALLY REMOVED

First lady Laura Bush is undergoing health care can be." href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/07/laurabush.surgery/index.html">routine outpatient surgery today to relieve pressure on pinched nerves in her neck, the White House says. Doctors tell Associated Content that the nerves in question control the muscles in Mrs. Bush's face responsible for the insanely adoring but strangely vacant grin she wears whenever in the presence of her husband.

This will be the second time the procedure, known as de-Desmondification (named for Sunset Blvd character Norma Desmond, immortalized by Gloria Swanson), has been performed on a first lady, as Nancy Reagan required 7 hours of nerve un-pinching in 1989 to remove the Rictus of Office from her face.

"You simply can't grin that much adulation out of your face and expect those nerves to remain healthy," said Dr. Saul Rosenblatt of the Emotionally Disassociative Repetitive Stress Institute. "The first lady has worn the exact same smile of frozen, joyless devotion for more than seven years now, something had to give." Dr. Rosenblatt referred us to an X-ray of Mrs. Bush's neck and face. "You can see here, the marginal mandibular branch is utterly calcified, giving the first lady that eerie, static look of blank-faced worship. The Platysma and Triangularis muscles have completely atrophied from lack of use in any other expression but blank, almost retarded bliss."

The White House says the operation will take place at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where all surgical schedules have been cleared to accommodate the first lady. "We don't have much going on around here these days, what with The Surge™ being so successful," Colonel Patricia D. Horoho, Commander of the Walter Reed Health Care System, said. "President Bush says we're kicking ass, right? So pretty soon we'll all be out of jobs!" This brought a chorus of laughter from the beds full of wounded veterans, who clapped their prosthetic limbs in a hearty round of applause.

The first lady is expected to make a full recovery, allowing for at least one more year of the doe-eyed deification of her husband. Experts suspect the look will begin to fade in January of 2009 and never be seen again by Valentine's Day of that year.