Local reporters for Fox, CBS, and NBC in St. Louis squared off Wednesday with McCain press aide Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush White House communications director seen here claiming she "worked at the White House for seven years" (Seven years? Really?) and her boss, Brooke Buchanan, McCain's national press secretary. It may be a bit hard to follow, but apparently all the fuss was over the McCain campaign's attempt to micromanage "the shot."
WIndy's Matt Delong explains:
For all those who favor just "letting McCain be McCain," it's not going to happen -- not with this crew at least. They decide what angles he's shot from (never from the left, he has scars from a bout with melanoma), and they make sure there is always some patriotic imagery in the background, no matter which direction the camera is facing.
Okay, that may help explain what was going on with the McCain camp, but why would the 'Show Me State' reporters seem to recoil at a request to 'show me' the shot? Could the media's infatuation with McCain actually be hitting a snag, or could it have had something to do with the fact that all this happened just one day after the news that St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch would be sold to the Belgian firm InBev when John McCain showed up to "to rub salt in the wounds of Missourians suffering the slings and arrows of a GOP-ruined economy"?
McCain promptly comes to St. Louis --the home of Anheuser-Busch-- for a mega-dollar reception at the vast estate of the former United States ambassador to, of all countries, Belgium.
Notwithstanding the fact that John and Cindy McCain will reap millions of dollars from the Anheuser-Busch sale. ...
Whatever the reason, it's worth noting that even before this train wreck, Missouri was already shaping up to be a tight race.
