Celebrity week ... Playing nice ... Keyes, Kucinich ticked

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DES MOINES, Iowa -- This was celebrity week in Iowa.Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois brought talk-show host Oprah Winfrey to stump for him. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York played her trump card: Bob Vila. (You know, the home-improvement guy.)Well, not to be outdone, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina stumped alongside Hollywood actors Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon.Who could forget Robbins' performance as the studly baseball pitcher from the movie "Bull Durham"? (No word on whether his character tested positive for steroids.)And folks of a certain age probably know Bacon best for the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, which tries to prove the theory that any two people on the planet can be connected to one another in six steps or fewer.So, how do Edwards and Bacon know each other?As we learn from the Rocky Mountain News' David Montero, a "six degrees" master of the highest order, they're practically related.Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon - The John Edwards Edition:1. John Edwards was on "Real Time with Bill Maher."2. Bill Maher was in "Tomcats" with Jerry O'Connell3. Jerry O'Connell was in "Stand by Me" with Kiefer Sutherland4. Kiefer Sutherland was in "A Few Good Men" with Kevin Bacon.The only thing Montero fails to mention is that this also gives Edwards a link to President John F. Kennedy, given Bacon's very memorable performance in the Oliver Stone film "JFK."X...X...XMaybe candidates worried that Santa might be watching, because they tried to stay on their best behavior -- and avoid naughty spats -- in the last presidential debates before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.In fact, some of the most intense debates in Iowa this past week weren't onstage at the long-awaited Des Moines Register forums. They were in the jam-packed spin room, where reporters debated the restrictive formats and which candidates got included.X...X...XAfter Wednesday's Republican debate, former Ambassador Alan Keyes made a vociferous entrance to the spin room and was surrounded by writers who wanted to ask about his attention-grabbing appearance.Onstage, he had ignored some of the questions posed to him. He used some time to rap the Republican "elites" standing with him. And he questioned why the Establishment was trying to deny him equal time -- both before, during and after the debate.But reporters wanted to know: Why was he there? Does he even have much of a campaign operation in Iowa?This line of questioning launched Keyes into a monologue that went on and on and on. The gist of it: Keyes said voters should not be given "a communist-style limitation in their choices."But reporters kept pressing. When Keyes didn't like the way one reporter phrased a follow-up question along these lines, he lashed out, asking if the reporter was motivated by racial considerations. (No, said the reporter, who didn't back down.)When others questioned whether Keyes was even holding public campaign events, he lashed out again, saying it's not up to the media to decide what constitutes an active campaign.When asked if he thought other low-polling long shots like Illinois businessman John Cox should have been included in the debate, Keyes said, essentially, yeah. He said all the candidates who qualify for the ballot in various states should be included, and that it shouldn't be up to anyone else to winnow the field beyond that.X...X...XThe next morning, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio got his name in the paper, but not for the reason that the Democratic long shot might like.After Keyes' appearance, the newspaper figured it needed to explain why Kucinich was being excluded from the Democratic contest.The rules said that before October, candidates had to have scored 1 percent or more in the newspaper's poll. They had to employ at least one paid Iowa campaign staffer. And they had to have a campaign office -- not just somebody's home office -- in the state.That home-office rule left Kucinich out. And the campaign was not happy."The Iowa caucuses have been portrayed as having national implications, and if the Register has decided to use hair-splitting technicalities to exclude the leading voice of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, then the entire process is suspect," the campaign said in a release.If it's any consolation, there was a general consensus among the bored journalists who covered these polite and mostly news-free debates: He didn't miss anything.(Contact the writer at sprengelmeyerm(at)shns.com. Read daily dispatches from the "Back Roads to the White House" at http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/sprengelmeyer/.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)