Obama's Columns At Invesco Stir GOP

The McCain campaign is ecstatic over this report from Reuters: "Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple."

By noon, three emails mocking Obama over the columns had been blasted out by the Republican National Committee, with more sure to come.

The Obama campaign is mostly silent on the issue, eager not to spoil any surprises for Thursday night. But one convention official said that the columns are meant to reference Washington DC, not ancient Greece, a fact that will become clear as the program unfolds in the lead up to Obama's speech.

In the meantime, ThinkProgress has posted photos from the 2008 Virginia Republican Convention, which also used columns as a backdrop.

And HuffPost blogger Bob Cesca has an impressive collection of photos of John McCain posing in front of columns.

Comments

[filo]

I guess the trolls would rather see a green screen backdrop. They are obviously green with envy.

[applebutter]

Um: Lincoln Memorial. Martin Luther King speech, "I have a dream".

What a hoot though, seeing Republicans getting all upset about "Greek Columns" and the inherent message - that no uppity black man deserves such a stately setting. Idiots.

[antaeus]

Heads up, but Republicans are not the only critics of that over-produced stage set.

Maybe it's because you're so young and have grown up in a country where, if one can't actually visit places like Venice and Paris, one can always go to the Nevada desert and gawk at cheesy simulacra, that you confuse an actual "stately setting" with a cheap imitation.

The Obama we admired on the stump in the primary would have been better served by a simple backdrop. The glories-of-empire monstrosity they have now is exactly the kind of thing Republicans themselves do; that's the point!

[Manx]

To me, the columns are redolent of Greece, the birthplace of democracy. By criticizing the columns, Republicans demonstrate their lack of support for democracy. (That's applying Republican logic when the subject is the war: If you criticize our occupation of Iraq, then you don't support the troops.)

[moxieme]

And can't we ALL vividly envision the same scenario with cell bars yet another exploitation of the one and only POW? They're probably incensed they didn't think of it first. Or they could have staged a mock biker rally(no offense to the sport) replete with the wet T-shirt contest and Cindy as the winner. What is wrong with the MSS? They are almost as deep in the gutter as the McCain campaign. they keep talking about focusing on the issues and THEY continue to focus on bull****! I'm watching the remainder of the conventions on C-Span. PBS has even acquiesed to the neocons with David Brooks and his little nervous guilty grin, making all types of innuendos slanted toward the Repubs. This crap about where Obama delivers his acceptance speech is not news. It's the MSS pandering to the neocons and all their wealthy male European American gatekeepers.

[dadumdee]

LMAO!!!

[enaught]

If the Republicans object to Greco-Roman architecture, then why don't they just resign all their political posts and abandon Washington, DC for good?

[dillydawg]

It seems the Republicans set the talking points for the MSM whether print or TV. The media deems it worthy of repeating and promoting therefore, giving it some nod of credibility and worthy of endless discussion. Sometimes (like a cigar) stupid is just stupid and isn't worthy of attention. It is just worthy of dismissal.

[rollingdivision]

New York Post "As if a Rocky Mountain coronation were not lofty enough, Barack Obama will aim for Mount Olympus when he accepts his party's nomination atop an enormous, Greek-columned stage - built by the same cheesy set team that put together Britney Spears' last tour." Someone in the Obama campaign must be a McCain operative.

[RoveRoveRoveYourBoat]

Looks kinda like the Spinal Tap stage decoration.
Albert Speer liked neoclassical monumentality too.

[antaeus]

Cheap Republican sniping aside, the overly stagey quality of the rigid backdrop--meant to evoke the greco-roman probably, but coming off as more Las Vegas--is probably a mistake.

Isn't the columnar, phallocentric proclamation of empire the very thing that typifies the hateful Bush regime? If this architecture has associations of democracy, then it also has associations of pomposity and collapse and decadence.

What would have been so bad with a simple lectern and a microphone?

[JimR]

I guess columns are elitist. We must tear down all the columns in the country!

[antaeus]

Not elitist.

Kitsch.

[Phoebe917]

you people focus on the weirdest sh*t. this is history in the making; even the republican sycophants at fox news say so. if the man wants columns let him have columns. maybe mccain can have as his backdrop dover air force base with the many caskets coming off the planes.

[JvmAriz]

I'm sure I'm not the first one who thought the stage evoked a subtle reminder that today, August 28th, is the 45th anniversary of Dr. King's 'I Have a Dream' speech. How far some of us have come, and how far the McCain team has sunk.

[jpcline004]

The "columns" are supposed to invoke Democratic ideals like the DC monuments and Ancient Greece, the birthplace of Democracy.

In order to represent THEIR political beliefs, the RNC will be using a set based on Neanderthal burial mounds.

[rblackbird]

Obama has reassembled Caesar's Palace in "Mile High" stadium. Does the set come with slot machines?

[BassMent]

Umm... it's called Greek Revival. It's an architectural style. You can see it well represented in about 75% of the government buildings in Washington!

The GOP is grasping at straws like this because they've got nothing good to say about anything they've done in the last 8 years, and nothing legitimately bad that they can level at Obama.

[Wintergreen4President]

Thank you. Haven't any of these Repugs ever noticed the architecture in D.C.?

[leftoflennon]

They are VIDEO columns morons!