The stage is set ... again

So now that the Clinton-Obama war that FakeNews (oops, I mean FoxNews) was banking on failed to materialize, what has the network concocted as the controversy of the day? Whether the large, column-style backdrop on the stage where Barack Obama will deliver his acceptance speech tonight is too ostentatious. It looks Roman-esque, the Foxies have been telling us breathlessly all morning, and they’ve repeated, ad nauseum, the mocking response by Republicans that people attending the event at Invesco Field in Denver should wear togas.

My, how short some people’s memories are! The Obama stage, columns and all, is almost a carbon copy of the one on which President Bush delivered his acceptance speech in 2004 at the Republican National Convention in New York City. The first photo below is the Denver stage. The one below that shows Bush speaking four years ago at Madison Square Garden.

And by the way, the columns on the stage at Invesco aren’t meant to conjure up images of ancient Rome. They’re meant to look like the columns of the Lincoln Memorial, in front of which a black leader from an earlier generation, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech on – oh yeah, that's right – Aug. 28, 1963 … exactly 45 years ago today. Get it? Of course you do. Too bad Fox doesn’t.

The other “problem” that Fox is trying to play up is that it will be difficult for Obama to make a personal connection with people in an audience of more than 70,000. He doesn’t have to. They’re voting for him anyway. The people with whom Obama needs to connect will be those watching him on TV, and his face will look the same to them whether he’s speaking in a football stadium or a small theater.