EXCLUSIVE: North Hollywood Middle School Teacher Wonders Why McCain Campaign Is Dumb

Your editor's sort-of relative teaches at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood! We knew she taught in the Valley but did not know where, exactly -- and she is right there, at the heart of the failure of the John McCain Campaign and its weird attempt to putsomekind of picture related to Walter Reed Army Hospital behind McCain's head during his big acceptance speech about his plane crash 40 years ago, even if all most of you saw, on the teevee, was yet another dumb "green screen" behind his bald skull, just waiting for web geeks to fill that vapid void with dancing hobbits, furry porn or Abu Ghraib photographs. Anyway ....

The teacher writes:

Did you watch McCain's speech? Evidently, the school where I work ended up making its way into the Republican Convention. It seems that there should have been a picture of Walter Reed Hospital (related to McCain's release as a POW), but Walter Reed Middle School was used in the background.

It was so funny that a lot of reporters had nothing better to do on Friday. (I guess that's actually good news -- there must have been very little bad news if they had time to get to this story.) The poor office staff and principal had to keep answering phone calls and just saying it was a mistake. I saw reporters after school -- interviewing people (parents?) and taking photos.

The McCain campaign, instead of simply copping to a screwup, as it sort of did originally, is now claiming that the random use of this school picture was, er,intentional.  LAT's Top of the Ticket blog reports:  

Eventually, the McCain camp today issued a statement insisting that that no mistake had been made. "The changing image-screen was linked to the American thematics of the speech and the public school was simply part of it," said spokesman Tucker Bounds.

Our teacher-in-law's principal is repulsed by the whole thing, becoming the latest in an endless line of performers, writers and institutions disgusted and appalled by the McCain Campaign's illegal and amoral use of images, songs and words created by good people:

It has been brought to the school’s attention that a picture of the front of our school, Walter Reed Middle School, was used as a backdrop at the Republican National Convention. Permission to use the front of our school for the Republican National Convention was not given by our school nor is the use of our school’s picture an endorsement of any political party or view.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin has purchased this entire school, with government earmark money, to instruct her 7,000 children how to ride exhaust-belching snowmobiles around the trailer park instead of working, and how dinosaurs never existed.

EARLIER: Green Screen Behind McCain Actually Lawn of, Uh, Middle School In, Uh, North Hollywood