Last week, I criticized a new tone-deaf Obama ad that hit McCain on his computer illiteracy, because I thought it would alienate older voters who may have similar problems. Jonah Goldberg decides to play the POW card in today’s LA Times, arguing that McCain can’t use a computer because of his injuries:
One reason McCain is not versed in the mechanical details of sending e-mail and typing on a keyboard is that the North Vietnamese broke his fingers and shattered both of his arms. As Forbes, Slate and the Boston Globe reported in 2000, McCain’s injuries make using a keyboard painfully laborious. He mostly relies on his wife and staff to show him e-mails and websites, though he says he’s getting up to speed.
Goldberg is relying on some pretty old information for this argument. Spokesman Tucker Bounds claimed McCain “travels with a laptop,” in response to this very ad. At the same time Goldberg argues that McCain can’t use a computer because of his war injuries, he quotes Jacob Weisberg describing McCain as “cybersavvy” which is a bit hard to square with McCain’s recent admission that “I am learning to get online myself.”
McCain may very well have trouble typing because of his injuries, but since the campaign has spent so much time lying and making contradictory arguments about McCain’s technological skills it’s actually difficult to figure out what the truth is, and Goldberg doesn’t do McCain any favors in this regard. But even if McCain does trouble using his hands to type, there’s an entire industry set up around helping people with all kinds of physical disabilities use computers. It’s the kind of thing that you’d expect the “cybersavvy” chairman of the commerce committee to know about.
At any rate, it’s difficult to argue that McCain is a tech genius who helped create the Blackberry at the same time that you’re saying his injuries have left him unable to use modern technology.
That doesn’t make Obama’s ad any less stupid.
–A. Serwer
