Did Einstürzende Neubauten Play At the Berlin Rally?

You heard the story about how John McCain’s campaign went after Barack Obama because he didn’t visit wounded soldiers in Germany during his campaign swing last month, then the allegations that McCain’s people were ready with the charge that he had been using the troops as props if he had gone to visit them. “Oh, no!” they cried, “We would never do that!

Well, here’s an example of how they would.

Currently, McCain is blathering on about how much of a “celebrity” Barack Obama is. All McCain’s people are talking about how he draws huge crowds because he’s such a “rock star.” Not that there’s anything there, of course.

But two short months ago, when Obama drew a crowd of more than 70,000 people to Tom McCall Waterfront Park here in Portland, the storyline from McCain’s supporters was quite the opposite. This is what Robert Knight at the conservative Media Research Center’s Newsbusters site said:

From CNN to the New York Times, the media hyped Barack Obama’s Portland, Oregon rally on Sunday, some comparing him to a rock star.

Unmentioned in national reporting was the fact that Obama was preceded by a rare, 45-minute free concert by actual rock stars The Decemberists. The Portland-based band has drawn rave reviews from Rolling Stone magazine, which gave their 2005 album Picaresque four and a half stars (out of five), and another four and a half stars for 2007’s The Crane Wife.

How many of the people showed up to hear Obama, and how many to hear the band?

Just over two months later, and the same site’s running a poorly-executed parody cover of Tiger Beat with Obama as the main squeeze.

And, pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt, I see as I’m finishing this post that The Guardian‘s Oliver Burkeman already wrote this piece, along with the information that the band that played in Berlin was Reamonn. He also notes that NewsMax and others were still trying to make the case that the only reason 200,000 people came out to see Obama there was to hear some free pop-rock, while the McCain people are pushing the opposite line.