Dueling Riders

Last week The Smoking Gun obtained and published Vice President Dick Cheney's standard "tour" rider - the written demands to hotels when Cheney travels. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show did, as usual, a brilliant job of ridiculing requests such as a "private bathroom" as if Cheney would be using a public trough and that "all televisions (must be) tuned to FOX News" because, god forbid, Cheney walks into a room and catches a non-Fox News show that tells him what a "shitty" job he's doing or so says Stewart. Watch the video here. Of course my favorite part is Cheney's request that he must also be provided "a rifle, ammo and an old man's face."

So what does the news media do? Of course they find John Kerry's hotel demands from two years ago and point out that he "hates celery." The list is really a list of foods that he eats and since he's not ordering for himself it makes sense. The newspapers asked for are The New York Times, The Washington Post and the local papers. Giving Kerry a national and local sense of what's going on. Contrast that to Cheny demanding only Fox News to be on when he walks into a room.

Cheney's rider isn't as weird as Led Zeppelin's but it's a bit odd by comparison to Kerry's and the press simply thinks publishing both is the detached, "balanced" way of doing things. The only facts of a presidential campaign are the dates, times and locations of the candidates' appearances. Some editorial content is used to explain what happened. I don't think there is deep meaning to the riders, maybe shallow meaning, but the fact that Kerry might dislike celery and Cheney hates facts is the real story here. In 2008 are we going to see "Celery Farmers for Truth?" Count on it.