In one of the typical networks excesses in campaign trivia, there was this exchange on Tuesday’s edition of Good Morning America on ABC:

KATE SNOW: Around the water cooler this morning, Blender magazine got a list together. Each of the presidential candidates, what they listen to, what’s on their i-Pods and we’re going to roll some of these quite different- SAWYER: John McCain has an i-Pod? SNOW: Yeah, I think they both do. SAWYER: Really? SNOW: I think.

Translation: John McCain doesn’t have an i-Pod. He has a snazzy Sixties Hi-Fi and a pile of Ray Conniff LPs. This trivia is only insulting when you consider that Sawyer would sniff at McCain, but use the i-Pod as a point of puffery with Syrian dictator Bashir Assad back in February 2007:

SAWYER: Do you have an iPod?
ASSAD: Yes.
SAWYER: What’s on it?
ASSAD: What’s on it? Plenty of songs. Arabic and westerns. Some French, because my foreign language used to be French before English.
SAWYER: And you’re a country music fan. Faith Hill? Shania Twain?
ASSAD: [Laughs] Yeah.

I’m not sure Americans really needed to picture that Syrian tyrants bop their heads to Shania singing ”Man! I Feel Like A Woman!”