noted over at the campaign desk blog: a useless post critiquing the fake background from a recent bush speech about education reform.

bush gave the speech at a falls church high school in front of a set that was made to look like a row of lockers (though they didn't do a very good job); the author is concerned that the washington post both wrote an article about the speech and took a picture of bush in front of the fake lockers, but never mentioned that the lockers were in fact fake:

As it turns out, Bush was standing in front of a painted backdrop. The Post's photo doesn't make that clear, but the Associated Press photo featured above -- which shows the whole stage -- does (click on the image for a larger version). This administration is well known for using carefully chosen backdrops to put forth its message, of course. But here they're playing a visual trick -- fabricating a backdrop to make it look as if Bush really is standing in front of a row of lockers, not in a generic hall. And the Washington Post simply plays along.

Now, contrary to suspicions in some quarters, we don't typically ask a lot of our press corps -- simply an accurate recounting of an event would be good, for starters. But by providing a misleading visual to its readers without elaboration, the Post fails even at that very basic task. As one of our readers put it, "if a paper can't run a photo which truthfully captures the nature of an event, it shouldn't run one at all."

i mean, i agree with that. but with all the other fallacies bush feeds to the media, can't we all agree to let the fake locker thing slide and concentrate on important stuff, like, oh, any of the other information in the post article? really. who gives a shit?