E-mail From The Floor

To: AllPolitics
Fm: Ed Turner/CNN
In: San Diego
Posted: Aug. 12, 1996

Subject: BSCs, SPOs and the Hufferwoman

For years the sine qua non of political one-upmanship has been the VIP car, entrance, party, treatment. Now, responding to the wonderful times in which we live, our system has developed the BSC, the bomb swept car, which has its/their own entrance at the convention. One can only imagine the sturm and drang among the climbers who don't actually have that BSC sticker or whatever it is one gets after your auto has been swept and found to be clean of any clinging pieces of dynamite. "Darling, I don't know how to break this to you but (sob) our limo will not be swept (whine)," the political hasbeen tells his significant political (SPO) other. Bravely, the SPO, switching her rhinestone Dole pin from one prominent display area to the other, says, "We can only show them by blowing up. Get Atlanta on the phone."

My own plans for the week include singing the national anthem. Convention planners announced they are using no names and will make them stars. My no name is as good as the next no name, and I have brought silence to entire cocktail parties with my pereformance of "As Time Goes By." I would list the no names named to be the no name singers, but I have forgotten them.

Arianna Huffington, who is rich and beautiful and, therefore, a great Republican, has a sly sense of humor that may not push its way through your cable but is electric in person. She is taller than you might think (most TV people are 4' tall) and trim with a glint that knows, as the current novel says, it's all opera. And here the fat lady may not even show up, much less sing. Anyway, Arianna is not to be dismissed, even though that accent is not real; actually she is from Athens, Ga., not Athens, Greece. She will slip into a rumpled 'y'all' when no one is looking. The Hufferwoman will be a power to surf for in tomorrow's political opera. (We don't know if her pickup truck has been bomb swept.)

Convention Day One and life in the anchor booth varies little convention to convention. We are on the first floor, directly under the anchor stars, and it is here we slant and distort the news. There are at least 35 TV sets around the walls; we watch, fretting over the competition -- and migod everyone seems to be in the newsbiz these days -- and try to shape our coverage. Somewhere in here we got to get a little of this convention on the air! JUST KIDDING GOP MONITORS< EASE UP< CALM DOWN&$ JEEZE>>BOOTH LIGHTS OUT !))( absw AND WE.......

Not meaning to name drop but life in the anchor booth, editorial side, can be a culture shock. sitting across from me now is George Stephanopolous, White House policy head wonk, who was on Crossfire with Ralph Reed, God's guy at the convention. George, a pleasant enough fellow, shook hands all round with the GOP stalwarts, who were also crowded into our first floor because VP candidate Jack Kemp was upstairs and his entourage, which once numbered one, has now exploded into 12gabillion.

George has drawn the film crews from all over the world to the perimeter of the booth, jamming them with the crews already on hand for Kemp. Several are probably dead, but we won't report it because it has nothing to do with the convention. So you read it here first. And only. We are awash in Senators and Reps and party punjabs. Everyone but me seems very young. High energy, kind of an unnatural color in their cheeks. Trim. Sigh.