So I'm driving along minding my own business, enjoying the beautiful sunshine on my way into work when I hear the latest ad from Barry's campaign. You know the one about how John McCain doesn't use email blah blah blah. Here is the ad:
Do I take this as a slam on McCain?
No.
One word comes to mind when I hear this ad.
Desperate.
That is how I took the ad, not as a slam against McCain but as a desperate hail mary response to the drop in polls that Barry Obama has taken recently.
Why didn't I take it as a slam on McCain? Why doesn't it bother me that he can't type?
Well, go back a few decades to his prisoner of war time and you might understand. When you are tortured on a daily basis for 5 or 6 years, shoulders dislocated again and again, fingers broken, beaten with pipes and given medical treatment that would, in a normal society, get the doctor thrown in jail for malpractice, you can see why maybe he doesn't have the full use of his arms. And maybe, just maybe, using a computer or typing is extremely difficult, or dare I say impossible, for him. He can't even raise his arms above his shoulders!
As Jonah Goldberg notes in his blog post, "even the most ardent supporter of Barry, Jacob Weisberg of Slate, noted in 2000:
"At 63, he is the oldest of the bunch and because of his war injuries, he is limited in his ability to wield a keyboard."
The article by Weisberg notes how McCain is actually quite techologically literate, quite the opposite impression you get from the latest ad from Barry's campaign.