While fans of The Daily Show may have been surprised at Arianna Huffington’s seemingly on the spot offer to bus any New Yorkers who required a lift to Jon Stewart’s “Rally To Restore Sanity” or Stephen Colbert’s “March To Keep Fear Alive,” the announcement came as a shock to Huffington’s “people,” as well.
Huffington explained how the idea, estimated to cost around $250K so far, came to pass as she prepped for her TDS appearance:
“Jon and I were talking in the green room about the rally. I said, ‘Oh my God, how are those people going to get there?’ On the air I decided to make that offer, it was spontaneous, and nobody knew. My people were in the green room with me, and even they had no clue.”
The night after the announcement, Stewart poked fun at the Huffington Post’s reporting style when recounting the segment:
“Oh my God, Arianna just Oprah’ed the buses!” Stewart said the following night. “By the way, I hope that her announcement was real and not some Huffington Post thing where it’s not like actual transportation, it’s just embedding a link to Greyhound. Like, I hope they’re not just being bus aggregators in this situation.”
HuffPo president Greg Coleman conceded that the price tag for the rally buses would be quite high for the tens of thousands of riders who have RSVPed, but he says that the company is reaching out to “marketers” and that they see the event as an “opportunity.”
