Mardi Gras: CNNers Ride Aboard Floats

CNN anchors and reporters have been riding along as Carnival season parades toward Fat Tuesday.

“Sunday night, I rode in a parade with Endymion, one of the major carnival organizations. I was a guest on Dan Aykroyd’s float, and I was honored to ride with a half-dozen first responders — police officers and firefighters — the real heroes of the storm,” Anderson Cooper blogged on CNN.com. Cooper filed a diary entry about the experience on 360 last night.

This morning, CNN correspondent Chris Lawrence rode aboard one of the floats in the Zulu parade, and CNN Gulf correspondent Susan Roesgen rode aboard one of the floats in the Rex parade. (Roesgen was “the first woman in the parade’s 135 year history to ride in Rex.”)

Are anchors and reporters from other networks participating in Mardi Gras the way CNN is?

> Update: 1:14pm: “Did you recently see Kathleen Koch on CNN’s air riding in a parade IN HER HONOR with a mike in her hand, waving at people, reporting on it, and in turn, HERSELF. Do they have no standards at CNN?”