Does McCain Get the Joke?

It scares me that we might elect a president who's never used a computer. That's John McCain, who refers to Google as "the Google" and who for a long while seemed to revel in his computer ignorance, as if computers were something for the elite and not a critical component to any broad understanding of our economy, both local, national, and global. (And again, where does he get his porn?)

At a fund-raiser last night in San Francisco McCain said, "I do understand the importance of the computer. I understand the importance of the blogs." This is encouraging, but it's impossible to grasp the importance of computing without serious experience with a computer. How they work on a micro level is informative of how they're transforming the world in a macro level, more so than any other point of reference I can think of. (Also, a campaign aid needs to tell John to stop putting "The" in front of every computer-related noun.)

McCain continued: "But I am forcing myself ... let me put it this way, I am using the computer more and more every day."

I don't know how much one can learn about computers while running for President but my hunch is that he's not yet up to speed on social networking sites like Facebook. Which makes you wonder if he understands the RNC's latest ploy: BarackBook.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008