Mary Katharine Ham has a very interesting post on the importance of staging and advance work in sending a message on television. She has posted two pictures of the Obama rally in NC held tonight - one the television shows and the other from a little more…uh, inclusive angle.

As Seen On TV:

As Seen In Real Life:

Now anyone in politics can tell you that every campaign in the world tries to master the angle the media depicts in photos and on television in addition t orchestrating countless other things to portray an bigger, more excited, all around better crowd than might actually be there. But Miss Ham (is it Miss or is she a Mrs.? I just don’t know) brings up an interesting point here about the lack of media scrutiny of such facts with the Obama campaign and an overzealousness to report them about Republicans like John McCain:

I realize it’s standard practice to rope off an area of a venue for crowd-wrangling and appearances, but this is a little drastic. McCain’s event at the Wait Chapel at Wake Forest today was nicely filled if not overflowing, but I imagine if he had held it at Groves Stadium and filled only the endzone seats, someone in the media might have said something about it. Obama doesn’t have such worries, I guess.

Indeed.

Every now and then, an inquiring reporter calls up the office and I’m able to give some answers about the direction of the GOP, the youth movement, or current events. I enjoy this because it gives me a channel as the representative of the organization to speak directly to thousands of people and, of course, I encourage all local and state CR leaders to seek out as much positive media attention as they can find.

Here’s a segment I did with XM Radio on their POTUS channel (dedicated to politicis in 2008 24/7) along with Chris Brooks from GWU and some of our friends across the aisle. You follow the link and then download the podcast for free through iTunes.

Plus, it’s fun to rag on the lefties with everyone listening…