MTV didn't throw Bush/Cheney an inaugural bash. Leading up to the absent event, some cried foul -- I said, "BIG WHOOP!" Before Lieberman, the entertainment industry and the Democratic Party were in synch right down to the subatomic level. It's just the way it is. Big Business is mostly with the Republicans, so it balances out. While the stars of NBC's prime-time shows talk at their ever-shrinking audiences, spewing rhetoric they have no real business vomiting at the public, their network's owner, dear old GE, is bringing good things to light up Republican party leaders' eyes in those dimly-lit backrooms -- money, and lots of it.

Back to MTV's twisting of what should be a no-brainer, equal-opportunity policy for their quadrannual celebrations. In 1992 and 1996, they held these get-togethers for Clinton/Gore. Great. Anything that gets out nation's minimum-age voters to step away from their TVs and go to their polling places HAS my vote. These two fêtes were the culminations of MTV's election-year machine, Rock the Vote. Whoop-tee-friggin-doo.

This year, MTV said they could not put a party together for Bush/Cheney because . . . it was too late. A big organization like MTV should have no trouble pulling a bevy of celebrities in a flash for a free ad blitz. After I first heard about this remarkable indecision and busied myself with faux depression at not getting a chance to miss out on a snoozefest like this, some talking head blared forth from the tube and said, in a nutshell: Inauguration Day was going to be on January 20, the same as it has been for every president after he got elected since 1937 (when FDR first had to follow the 20th Amendment, appropriately enough, to the Constitution for his second swearing-in). Indeed, Election Day came and went on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, same as always, so MTV had exactly the same amount of time to prepare the event.

Not so, according to our pals at the music channel. They pointed out that we had an unusually close election this time around, prolonged by recounts after court rulings after appeals after screwing chads. Translation: Mr. and Mrs. Michael Douglas couldn't RSVP until they were sure Gore was/wasn't in. Kids aren't going to watch those old politicians shake their wrinkly cans if some recognizable pop icons aren't up there with them.

Let's face the truth here. If the situation were reversed, and we hadn't found out until January 18 that Gore/Lieberman won the election, MTV would have managed to throw SOMETHING together. Why? Because they're hypocritical partisans, just like most of the rest of the country's media. If they don't get their way, they alternately pout, kick and scream, point fingers, or bring out the big cannon, whichever they think will be most effective for a given scenario. Funny, I would have thought MTV would have seen the fool's golden opportunity to convert (or at least hoodwink) the Republican Gen X- and Y-ers who may have tuned in (all six of them) to watch this year's blowout.