ATLANTA (CAP) - Headline News talk show host Nancy Grace said she is "honored and humbled" to have been chosen to be shot into space as part of NASA's first follow-up to the soon-to-be-defunct shuttle program.
"I am not a preacher, and I am definitely not a rabbi," Grace told CNN's Piers Morgan yesterday. "But as I accept this honor, I would say that the devil is doing the opposite of dancing tonight, whatever that would be. Maybe just sitting quietly in hell, not drinking champagne. Something like that."
Grace has been in the public spotlight recently with her coverage of so-called "tot mom" Casey Anthony, who was acquitted of murder charges last week despite Grace's assertion that she was "the most guilty person ever to exist in the long, sordid history of guilt."
"Even more guilty than that man I talked into committing suicide that time," she added.
She also referred to the jury in the case as being "full of kooky kook-heads" and spent a full 20 minutes of her most recent show throwing darts at 8-by-10 glossy headshots of the jury members.
"Hey, I got Juror No. 3 right in the eyeball!" exclaimed Grace after one particularly accurate toss. Then she looked directly into the camera, raised an eyebrow and said, "Does that give you any ... ideas?" followed by a laugh that one cameraman, who asked not to be identified, described as "the most bone-chilling sound I've ever heard."
"And I used to work in a slaughterhouse," he added.
According to NASA spokesman Marvin Federer, a panel made up of astronauts, scientists, administrators and elected officials was unanimous in its choice of Grace to be the premier participant in its new Shuttle+ project.
"The project involves sealing someone in a seven-foot-long capsule, placing them in a state of suspended animation and shooting them into space for seven to 10 years," said Federer. "Nancy was the first name that came up."
President Obama has been looking for a way to inject new life into the space program in the wake of the shuttle program's closure, given that NASA hadn't made any significant discoveries since it made headlines for picking up transmissions from previously undiscovered celebrity sex tapes. But the president was reportedly inspired by the success of the recent inclusion of supermodels and circus performers on a shuttle flight.
"Those bikini models and that midget, um, Earl, showed us that the American public is still interested in the space program," said Obama. "As long as we stay away from the parts of it they find boring, like, you know, science."
The end of the shuttle program means that to get American astronauts into space in the future, they will have to "hitch a ride with the Russians, or with rich people who build their own space shuttles," said Federer. But the Shuttle+ program, which requires only the capsule and a propulsion system - "basically a giant cannon," according to Federer - is a more economical way to continue space exploration.
"Unfortunately our astronauts weren't interested in exploring space in that way, which is why we decided to ask well-known public personalities" like Nancy Grace, said Federer. Other possible candidates reportedly included Sarah Palin, Jay Leno and Lady Gaga, and even the "tot mom" herself, Casey Anthony.
"But she was too busy getting her new talk show ready," said Federer.
- CAP News Staff