McCain's big night

Tonight was John McCain's big night. Thankfully, the "presumptive" prefix is now off all of the candidates.

I thought McCain's speech tonight was pretty good. Sure, he got off his jabs at Obama but I thought he was very diplomatic about it. He didn't belittle or demean Obama's resume as Palin did.

I thought McCain did what he had to do. He barely mentioned Bush as he wants to distance himself from Dubya. He played up his war service as kind of a way to make the people of the country believe his heroic and valiant efforts as a veteran will carry over to the White House.

I have give McCain props for bringing up education. This hasn't been touched on too much during the campaigns. He mentioned unions as well as good and bad teachers and schools that don't do well but I was hoping to hear some connection to No Child Left Behind. Would he reform it or keep it as it is?

The Republicans and their supporters made a big stink about Obama's "Greek like stage." Being a broadcast teacher, I was distracted by the "video" background of McCain's stage. Too many times, on medium shots (chest up) of McCain, we saw bright blue in the background (see above picture) and when the shot went wide, it was revealed that that blue was part of a shot of the sky with the American flag. Or we saw a loud green in the background. I thought something was wrong with the background and it looked to me like a weather forecaster's "green screen" or "chroma-hey" background.

While looking for some images to upload on this blog, I went to Yahoo news which carries news/photos from the Associated Press. When I worked in media, I tried to give people a fair representation in the press. If they interviewed poorly, I tried not to let it show on the air by doing some serious editing or some other means to minimize the damage. How could the photo below be used? That's such an awkward picture!