Posted by Brad @ 3:21 pm on September 5th 2008

The RNC’s Disasterous Balloon Drop. Un-F’ing-Believable.

So, remember the giant green screen behind McCain that we all commented on in the liveblog last night?

Get this. It was not a green screen. It was a lawn. The giant screen behind McCain was actually this:

Now how dumb do you have to be to display an image not realizing that, for 30 million viewers, it will just be a bright green screen entirely reminiscent of the infamous “green screen” appearance a few months ago?

That’s dumb.

But here is where it gets into total f’ing cockup.

What building is that?

It is Walter Reed.

Walter Reed Medical Center? The symbol of support for veterans?

No. Walter Reed Middle School. In North Hollywood, California.

TPM’s Kate Klonick just got off the phone with an official at the school who confirmed this. “We didn’t know anything about it until it showed up last night,” Cathy McLaughlin, the school’s office technician, told Klonick. She confirmed that multiple media outlets have been calling and that a statement would be forthcoming from the school.

Let that sink in for a moment.

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THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF PUTTING UP A PICTURE OF WALTER REED ACCIDENTALLY PUT UP A PICTURE OF SOME RANDOM CALIFORNIA MIDDLE SCHOOL INSTEAD OF THE VA HOSPITAL!!!!

AND THEY EVEN FUCKED THAT UP!!!

Here is ABC News’ story on it. Here is the DailyKos writeup. CNet (”What’s McCain Doing In Front of My Junior High?”, heh), and more.

In the world of modern American political staging, that is a facepalm of historic proportions.

posted in: Main

16 Comments »

  1. Amusing.

    Not to toot my own horn, but I did note that it was the lawn in the comments last night.

    Comment by Cameron — 9/5/2008 @ 3:28 pm

  2. Oh man. I can’t get over this. He gave the first ten minutes of his Republican nomination acceptance speech, the culmination of his distinguished 30 year long political career, in front of a picture of an arbitrary junior high school pulled from Google Images or somesuch.

    That’s so fucking excellent.

    Comment by Brad — 9/5/2008 @ 3:29 pm

  3. Setting aside the technical goof, I thought the choice of rotating pictures was incredibly jarring to the TV audience. The solid black background that Palin delivered against was classy and elegant. Alternating various colors of the rainbow was just silly with McCain. Since the TV audience rarely got a full view of the big screen display behind McCain, only astute viewers could understand why the colors were changing.

    Comment by Cameron — 9/5/2008 @ 3:32 pm

  4. I sure didn’t get it, but I was mostly in here on the computer and listening to the speech. I probably only “watched” about a fourth of it by hopping between rooms.

    But I agree. It’s very nice for those few wide-angle shots. But then for the 90% of the speech as 99.99% of America sees it, it’s just “blue screen of death”.

    For McCain’s speech, they should have just showed Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Harder or something on the thing while he was talking.

    Comment by Brad — 9/5/2008 @ 3:43 pm

  5. On mute, I mean, because you don’t want to be disrespectful.

    Comment by Brad — 9/5/2008 @ 3:44 pm

  6. Though with closed captioning on so people can follow the plot.

    Comment by Brad — 9/5/2008 @ 3:44 pm

  7. Sorry, but this gaffe isn’t even in the same time zone as the “f’n balloons” thing at Kerry’s convention. That one was epic.

    Comment by James — 9/5/2008 @ 4:00 pm

  8. The staging of the whole convention was, as I said at the time, almost comedically bad.

    I don’t blame John McCain for being a mediocre speaker. I blame the many people who earn enormous salaries for the sole task of finding ways to accentuate the candidates’ strengths and accomodate their weaknesses. All of those people were asleep at the switch. ONLY the Palin team did their jobs.

    Comment by Rojas — 9/5/2008 @ 4:00 pm

  9. Sorry, but this gaffe isn’t even in the same time zone as the “f’n balloons” thing at Kerry’s convention. That one was epic.

    Are you joking? Some stage tech said “fucking” on live TV?

    I mean, this isn’t going to single-handedly destroy the McCain campaign as the balloon drop did Kerry’s in 2004 (clearly), but a stage tech losing their cool on a live mic is a lot different than the level of idiocy required for this one.

    Comment by Brad — 9/5/2008 @ 4:21 pm

  10. Again–all I want is a competent presidency–is that too much to ask? This does not bode well.

    Comment by Leotie — 9/5/2008 @ 7:23 pm

  11. haha.

    Comment by Brad — 9/5/2008 @ 7:28 pm

  12. Brad, I am always joking. Hello?

    Comment by James — 9/5/2008 @ 11:53 pm

  13. Ha. Sorry. That one should have been obvious.

    Comment by Brad — 9/6/2008 @ 1:17 am

  14. Hell, I thought he was serious too.

    Comment by Cameron — 9/6/2008 @ 1:30 am

  15. McCain campaign:

    “The changing image-screen was linked to the American thematics of the speech and the public school was simply part of it,” Mr. Bounds said, adding that during the speech, Mr. McCain “called for public education reforms that empower parents and students before bureaucrats and labor unions.”

    Reality.

    Comment by Brad — 9/6/2008 @ 7:53 pm

  16. Wow. Can I write ‘lol’ here?

    Comment by fred — 9/7/2008 @ 6:43 pm

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