“And absolutely, positively, no brown M&Ms!”

While rock stars and media celebrities are ofttimes poked fun at for their demands on hotels and green rooms and the like, analogous requests and conditions are made for prominent politicians: to wit, examples of handler documents for Dick Cheney …

Cheney does like his suite at a comfy 68 degrees. And, of course, all the televisions need to be preset to the Fox News Channel (what, you thought he was a Lifetime devotee?). Decaf coffee should be ready upon his arrival along with four cans of caffeine-free Diet Sprite. And when Cheney is traveling with his wife Lynne, the second family’s suite needs an additional two bottles of sparkling water. Mrs. Cheney’s H2O should be either Calistoga or, curiously, Perrier, a favored beverage of French terrorism appeasers.

… and John Kerry.

The documents (one is actually labeled “Confidential”) detail Kerry’s food favorites and drop the bombshell that the Massachusetts senator “hates celery.” Oddly, Kerry avoids all things tomato, the fruit behind his wife’s nine-figure ketchup fortune. His hotel rider notes that the “phone and the ability to order movies in suite should always be turned on and ready to go for JK’s arrival,” things that make him “very happy.” The more detailed rider, of course, belongs to the politician’s spouse, who likes celery and snoozing on a “Heavenly Bed” in a Starwood hotel that has “good air circulation.”

In all fairness, some of this may also be handlers/aides trying to anticipate needs, not the Antoinette commands of the pols themselves (“And none of that Nutrasweet crap, or I’ll disappear you to Gitmo!”). And, also to be fair, if I were on the road as much as these guys (especially during a presidential campaign), I might pull a few strings to have some standard, predictable creature comforts available, too.