Jake Tapper (“Why Doesn’t McCain Use a Computer?”) dissects a classy and positive Obama campaign ad. Read to the bottom and click on the second link:
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. introduced a new TV ad his week that paints Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as out of touch for being, when it comes to technology, shall we say a touch “old-school.”
“1982, John McCain goes to Washington,” the narrator says. “Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn’t. He admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an e-mail, still doesn’t understand the economy, and favors two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class. After one president who was out of touch, we just can’t afford more of the same.”
Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer told the Associated Press that the Obama campaign was not trying to invoke McCain’s 72 years. “Our economy wouldn’t survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn’t know how to send an e-mail.”
McCain did once describe himself as computer “illiterate” and dependent upon his wife for computer assistance, but there’s more to the tale than that.
Assuredly McCain isn’t comfortable talking about this — and the McCain campaign discouraged me from writing about this — but the reason the aged Arizonan doesn’t use a computer or send email is because of his war wounds.
I realize some of the nastier liberals in the blogosphere will see this as McCain once again “playing the POW card,” but it’s simply a fact: typing on a regular keyboard for any sustained period of time bothers McCain physically.
He can type, he occasionally does type, but in general the injuries he sustained as a POW — ones that make it impossible for him to raise his arms high enough to comb his hair — mean that small tasks make his shoulders ache, so he tries to avoid any repetitive exercise.
Again, it’s not that he can’t type, he just by habit avoids when he can repetitive exercise involving his arms. He does if he has to, as with handshaking or autographs.
It’s certainly possible that the Obama campaign did not know this, since McCain makes it sound in interviews as if this is a matter of choice, not discomfort because of his war wounds.
“I read my e-mails, but I don’t write any,” McCain told Fortune Magazine in 2006. “I’m a Neanderthal – I don’t even type. I do have rudimentary capabilities to call up some websites, like the New York Times online, that sort of stuff. No laptop. No PalmPilot. I prefer my schedule on notecards, which I keep in my jacket pocket.”
Dems are a classy bunch, I tell ya. Here’s more, just in case you didn’t get your fill. Getting old and getting cancer is a hoot, ain’t it?
But yet he was able to fly fighter planes in his post-POW years. Amazing.
As you gotta wonder just how long he can hold his cell phone up to his ear.
I know, I know, George. Just passing on those talking points.
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Welcome back, Rick. I’m sorry to hear your deal to buy the the replica of the Unabomber’s cabin in Colorado fell through. I know how much you like solitude and the great outdoors. I, of course, wish you had bought it so you’d get the hell out of our fair city. Hope springs eternal. (And you can take that communist scumbag Alex with you when you leave.)
Lots of Republicans out there in America’s West, George. If you ever ventured north of the 836 and didn’t consider a trip to the Westland Mall as being a cross-country trip, your world view might be a bit larger than 1 block on either side of Calle Ocho.
And you might actually be a little more tolerant of opposing viewpoints rather than hating your fellow Americans so much.
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You want me to be more “tolerant” of opposing viewpoints? Sure thing, Rick. You first.
Hey George, be easy on the ad. At least they didn’t call McCain a “POS”.
That’ll come soon enough, Robert…
Heh, Robert. I see you had to dig for that at 26th and SFDB. Good job researching.
I don’t know…what do you call someone who blatantly lies to the American public to advance their agenda? What do you call someone who flip flops on civil rights when it’s convenient for them? I don’t know. But it sure doesn’t amount to what Obama has been termed over here, which is…
Muslim anti-American racist Communist Castro sympathizer Elitist Socialist man very similar to Fidel Castro Marxist big, fat hypocrite weak, young, and inexperienced commie pretender Stalinist man sounding a lot like Fidel Castro and Hitler….
…at last count.
But save yourself some time researching all those and just check out the adjectives your co-writer Cigar Man uses in his last series of posts.
One other thing: Over at SFDB we don’t encourage comments that insinuate that the assassination of liberals and the phoning in of bomb threats into the NY Times by anyone, especially any commenter using the pseudonym “readytoshoot.”
So please take your or, I guess, my, “POS’ and stick it.
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Rick, any adjective used to describe you would have to invented. They’ve used all the good scatological ones up already.