Sen. McCain, Off the Floor And on the Carpet

Behrooz Araz, left, and Nestor Serrano in "24." The show's depiction of Muslims has drawn protests. (Isabella Vosmikova -- Fox)

"I'm not a candidate," repeated an exasperated McCain.

Winter TV Press Tour 2005 had a little trouble with the political process on Thursday when former senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart showed up via satellite for the HBO session on "Dirty War," its BBC-produced telefilm about a fictitious terrorist attack in London.

Rudman and Hart had led the commission that, eight months before Sept 11, 2001, had warned of the growing threat of a catastrophic international terrorist attack on the United States.

Rudman said he wanted HBO to send the flick to every governor to show to their homeland security people. Hart said that had HBO run this film in the summer of 2001, it might have saved a lot of lives. Both men said the nation is woefully unprepared and spending its homeland security money unwisely.

One critic, who apparently found their talk cheap, said, "I'd like to know what you're doing personally on the Senate floor" to address the problem.

Rudman noted that neither he nor Hart is still in the Senate, "but I wouldn't expect you to know that, sitting out there in California."

"Touche," responded the critic.

Fox has dumped its "24" headache onto its television stations, providing them with public service announcements produced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in response to the plot of the series' new season.

This week's fourth-season pilot features an upper-middle-class Muslim family operating as a terrorist sleeper cell. In the episode, the mother kills her son's non-Muslim girlfriend so that she won't get in the way.

The stations will decide if and when to run the PSAs, a Fox spokesman told The TV Column. WTTG told The Post's John Maynard that the station plans to run the announcements. "We're going to be putting them into our PSA rotation," the Channel 5 rep said.

Asked if the station would air a PSA during its telecast of "24," the rep said, "We're not going to be running them in local available on prime time." (That means no.)

"What we are hoping to do is to try and mitigate the damages of the stereotypes because it can bring real-life consequences on American Muslims and their lives here," CAIR spokesman Rabiah Ahmed told Reuters about the group's complaint.

"When average Americans don't have any personal interaction with Muslims, whether it be at work or at school, they base their perception of Islam and Muslims from what they see on TV," she said. "We did bring that to Fox's attention."

Fox does not plan to make any changes to the episodes that have been shot, the network rep said. It was unclear whether changes would be made on the show as additional episodes are shot. People who work on "24" did attend the meeting between the network and the Islamic organization.

"We met with reps from CAIR on Wednesday and found the meeting productive and informative, and we look forward to working with them in the future," the Fox spokesman said uninformatively.

Fox is giving closure to devoted followers of the reality series "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss" and "Playing It Straight," via its Web site.

"Boss" fans will get to see the unaired episodes for free, but Fox expects followers of "Playing It Straight" to pay for the privilege of seeing unaired episodes. The pay-per-view plans are odd, given that Fox posted the outcome of the show on its Web site last summer.

Fox pulled "Boss" after just five episodes; five episodes remain unaired of the low-rated sequel to the highly rated "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancee." In "Boss," allegedly business-savvy contestants were put through the wringer to win a job at a billion-dollar company that was bogus, as was its boss, N. Paul Todd, played by an actor. In the unaired episodes, challenges include creating art from hot garbage and an ad campaign for cosmetic surgery for the deceased.

The three episodes of "Playing It Straight" that aired averaged just under 4 million viewers before Fox put the show out of its misery last spring, leaving fans wondering whether single chick Jackie had successfully plowed her way through all 14 "stallions" at the dude ranch and found love with one of the straight men, in which case the happy couple would get to split the $1 million prize. If Jackie's gaydar failed her, the gay man of choice would get to keep the whole pot.

In July, Fox revealed that Jackie chose Banks, a straight software consultant from San Diego, and the happy couple rode off into the sunset.