Quote:
North Hollywood school shows up on McCain speech background

By Tony Castro, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 09/05/2008 03:59:43 PM PDT

What's in a name? Students at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood were finding out first hand Friday what Shakespeare might have meant.

Their school became the center of nation attention after a blow-up photo of the front of the mansion-like school building was mistakenly used as a backdrop for GOP nominee John McCain's nationally televised acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday night.



Republican convention planners apparently Googling for a photo of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, may have found a picture of the exterior of the school instead.

By late Friday morning, the middle school's phone system had become so overloaded with calls that Principal Donna Tobin posted an official response on the school's web site rather than field all the calls personally.

"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," Tobin said in her statement. "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."

Early afternoon Friday, a San Fernando Valley Democratic Party official and parent of a student at the school held a news conference in front of the suddenly nationally famous backdrop to make political hay of the Republicans' embarrassing incident.

"It was a big mistake wasn't it," said John Heaner, the Region 13 director of the California Democratic Party and member of the Walter Reed Middle School PTA.
"When you show a picture like that for five minutes in prime-time and you're not sure what you're showing, that's revealing.

"I can't lay this at feet of John McCain directly, but certainly his campaign is to blame."

Regional 13 of the Democratic Party extends from North Hollywood to West Hills and from Brentwood to Santa Clarita.

McCain and Republican officials did not immediately comment.

But the story became fodder for McCain bashing in the blogosphere.

LAist.com wrote that the mistaken middle school's photo on Google "sounds like the most plausible reason for how North Hollywood made its way into John McCain's big speech... unless he loves the San Fernando Valley that much.

"In any event, school officials are pissed and news of the flub has already made its way to their Wikipedia page, so now you know it's real.

"Incidentally, the school's facade does look like a huge mansion, perhaps not too dissimilar from one of McCain's houses."


In any event, McCain's speech was seen by a slightly larger percentage of viewers than the Obama speech. Obama representatives were surprisingly gleeful about that fact for some mysterious reason.