McCain, Email, and Obama's latest goof

Sorry if this seems like it's turning into a political blog, guys...it's not, really. But some stuff is simply too much to pass by.

The Obama campaign just released a TV spot attacking McCain. Fair enough. That's so often what politicians who are running against each other do.

But this one pokes a spot of fun at McCain because "he's admitted he can't send email."

Now, why do you think Senator McCain finds it difficult to "send email"?

Well, here's an interesting chunk from a 2000 Forbes Magazine article, which discusses the then presidential hopeful's innovative use of the Internet to push his campaign (emphasis mine):

In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate's savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. "She's a whiz on the keyboard, and I'm so laborious," McCain admits.

My friend Lisa sent me this paragraph and it took me maybe 5 seconds to track the source. Wouldn't you think that anyone aspiring to the highest office in the land, probably the world, would take the time to insure he wasn't doing something really stupid—like making fun of somebody's war injuries?

No, of course I don't think this latest gaffe was intentional. It is not fashionable, these days, to mock anybody's war record and Senator Obama, who wants to "make government cool again" is nothing if not fashionable.

However, somebody didn't do his or her homework when putting this spot together. And the Man Who Would Be President "approved this message."

TV ad here.

May 29, 2000 Forbes piece here.