Handlers Muzzle Barack? Suddenly Using Teleprompter On Campaign Trail?

The campaign handlers for Barack Obama have obviously decided that there will be no more failed jokes ala Kerry's "stupid kids get stuck in Iraq" faux pas of the 2006 campaign. Barack apparently blew his chance for ostensible extemporaneous elocution after his failed "lip stick on a pig" joke went over like a lead balloon last week. According to CNN, Obama is suddenly speaking from a teleprompter at outdoor campaign rallies.

One can just imagine how McCain would be eviscerated by the press if he had to start using a teleprompter at the average campaign stop. What sort of "senility" jokes would the press be filled with at that point? One can just guess that this news will be greeted with a yawn even though it seems to be a pretty strong curtailment of Obama's freedom to speak extemporaneously on the stump.

Certainly it is nothing odd to see a candidate of any stripe delivering a set piece speech from the device, but to have one at outdoor rallies and average campaign stops, well, that is quite unusual.

But the Illinois senator used a teleprompter at both his Colorado events Monday -- making for a particularly peculiar scene in Pueblo, where the prompter was set up in the middle of what is normally a rodeo ring.

Obviously Obama's famous stammer, his uncontrollable ums and ahs on top of his inauspicious "lip stick on a pig" comment has caused the campaign to reign in their inarticulate (once on his own and off the prompter) candidate.

I wonder if the media, though, will see this as the curb on Obama that it truly is? And placed there by his own campaign bosses, at that. This seems a pretty loud statement that his own people cannot trust him.

What do you folks think? Am I making too much of this?