Betsy's Page
HOMEAdvance your career by earning a masters degree
online.
Betsy neither necessarily uses,
nor endorses,
the products advertised on this site.
Advance your career by earning a masters degree
online.
The truth about Avesil
Wikio
Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights
Comments from an AP history
and government teacher in Raleigh, NC.
e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com
Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you.
Site Feed
The truth about Avesil
Wikio
Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights
Comments from an AP history
and government teacher in Raleigh, NC.
e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com
Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you.
Site Feed
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Why aren't the McCain folk jumping on this?
When conservative bloggers started raising the issue of the Obama ad mocking McCain for not using a computer and whether McCain's POW injuries might account for his non-use of computers, I though that this was quite a blockbuster of a response to the Obama ad. Jonah Goldberg first posed the question on Friday and soon he'd turned up several references from earlier times explaining that he didn't use a computer because his old injuries made it painful to write on a keyboard. Here is one description from the Boston Globe in 2000.McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.Then other bloggers turned up evidence that McCain is actually much savvier about the internet and telecommunications than he portrays himself as. He described himself as computer illiterate, but his 2000 campaign was actually a pioneer in using the web to raise money and rally supporters. Jacob Weisberg wrote in Slate about the then-revolutionary way that McCain was using the internet in his campaign against George W. Bush.Six months ago, no one would have pegged McCain as the most cybersavvy of this year's crop of candidates. 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. But McCain's job as chairman of the Senate commerce committee forced him to learn about the Internet early on, and young Web entrepreneurs such as Jerry Yang and Jeff Bezos fascinate him. Well before he announced his exploratory committee, McCain had assimilated the notion that the Web could be vital to the kind of insurgent, anti-establishment campaign he wanted to run. In December 1998, he sent his longtime political aide Wes Gullett to Minnesota to study Jesse Ventura's successful gubernatorial campaign, which was the first to use the Web in an effective and innovative way. "Wes went up to Minnesota and talked to Ventura's people," McCain told reporters on the Straight Talk Express yesterday. "That's really where we got the idea."Kevin Aylward of Wizbang turned up this and other excerpts from Joe Trippi's book that credited the McCain 2000 campaign for paving the way for his work on the Howard Dean 2004 campaign.It's no different with politics. I had watched the "1-800" populist candidates, like Jerry Brown and Ross Perot, and I closely followed John McCain's insurgent Republican presidential bid in 2000, the first national campaign to attempt to make use of the Internet. I held my breath that year - excited that someone was trying it, but terrified that they'd pull it off before I got the chance. They didn't. McCain managed to pull a decent number of people, about 40,000, into his campaign via the Internet, but it was the Newton of online political campaigns. The technology simply wasn't quite mature enough yet; enough snow hadn't been plowed.Well, that could mean just that McCain had hired smart guys to run his campaign, not that he really knew that much about it himself. But then isn't that what is important in a leader? Not that he can use the technology himself but that he understands the importance of the technology and knows how to find the right guys to make use of it.
I know that he is fully aware of the power of bloggers in politics as he was the one politician who made the most use of blogger conference calls last year at this time when his campaign was sagging. Even a lowly blogger such as myself was invited to participate in those calls and I was quite impressed with his openness to questions and follow-ups during the call. I even was able to solicit questions from my students and pose them to him during the call. Of course, now that he's wrapped up the nomination, I'm off the invitation list, but conservative bloggers are well aware of how astutely John McCain leveraged outreach to the blogosphere in a time when his campaign was doing poorly and didn't have much money.
Then Ace dug up a 2000 story from Forbes about how much McCain, as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Telecommunications knows about the whole field.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.Wow, the "Senate's savviest technologist" is certainly not a description one would have thought of to apply to the John McCain who tells people in interviews that he is close to being a computer illiterate. Here he is in July of this year playing dumb with the New York Times about the internet.Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.The Huffington Post has put up a series of pictures showing McCain using electronics from cell phones to a Blackberry. We don't know, of course, if he was the one who actually dialed the numbers or if a staff person dialed it and then handed it to him to talk. But, according to Jake Tapper in the quote linked below, his injuries don't make it impossible for him to type, just that it is painful if he does it for a period of time.
Q: Do you use a blackberry or email?
Mr. McCain: No
Mark Salter: He uses a BlackBerry, just ours.
Mr. McCain: I use the Blackberry, but I don’t e-mail, I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail. I read e-mails all the time, but the communications that I have with my friends and staff are oral and done with my cell phone. I have the luxury of being in contact with them literally all the time. We now have a phone on the plane that is usable on the plane, so I just never really felt a need to do it. But I do – could I just say, really – I understand the impact of blogs on American politics today and political campaigns. I understand that. And I understand that something appears on one blog, can ricochet all around and get into the evening news, the front page of The New York Times. So, I do pay attention to the blogs. And I am not in any way unappreciative of the impact that they have on entire campaigns and world opinion.
I expected any minute that there would be a rapid response ad and statement from the McCain campaign lashing out at Obama for mocking McCain's disability. Perhaps they'd join bloggers in pointing out that, if the Obama people were so smart, they could have googled around and found the same articles that the conservative bloggers have found. And they'd top it off with a list of McCain's accomplishments on whatever he's done on that subcommittee.
However, here it is two days later, and the supposedly rabid McCain campaign that jumped all over the lipstick comment within hours of Obama having made it and even had an ad up the next day have been silent about this whole matter. They're even refusing to answer questions. The Boston Globe has a story today about the flack that the Obama campaign is running in to with this ad, and tried unsuccessfully to get a comment from the McCain campaign.The McCain campaign itself did not take issue with the Obama ad, and spokesmen for the Arizona senator did not return calls seeking comment.Jake Tapper is also on the story and reports that the McCain camp didn't want him to report on McCain's disability.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.While McCain's liberal critics are sick of his talking about his POW experiences and have accused him of playing the POW card as a get-out-of-political-jams free card in order to score political points, he and his campaign seem strangely reluctant to use it here when it seems perfectly legitimate. Can't you just imagine the powerful spot they could make as they have one of his POW buddies look into the camera and say "Senator Obama is ridiculing John McCain for not sending emails. Perhaps Obama doesn't know that, as a result of torture he endured as a POW, torture that I witnessed, John McCain suffers pain when he tries to type on a keyboard." And then they could bring in his telecommunications background.
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.
So I'm wondering more about the dog that didn't bark. Why aren't the McCain folk all over this? Perhaps they don't want to bring up his injuries and give people the idea that he is handicapped. Perhaps the injuries aren't the reason he isn't using email. Maybe he just prefers talking to people on the telephone. Maybe he is as computer illiterate as he describes himself. Perhaps they just don't want to get off track with their real message, although they were certainly ready to jump on all htat manufactured outrage over the lipstick on a pig comment. Maybe they're waiting, having figured that people will be paying attention to the hurricane news and they can slap Obama back when they want. Maybe it's all those Rovian shenanigans forcing the Obama team to ridicule McCain over his computer illiteracy and then moving in with a stingray missile of a response. I figure that there must be some explanation since the McCain campaign hasn't been hesitant about playing tough in other instances. I just don't know what it is.Labels: John McCain
0 comments
Comments:
When conservative bloggers started raising the issue of the Obama ad mocking McCain for not using a computer and whether McCain's POW injuries might account for his non-use of computers, I though that this was quite a blockbuster of a response to the Obama ad. Jonah Goldberg first posed the question on Friday and soon he'd turned up several references from earlier times explaining that he didn't use a computer because his old injuries made it painful to write on a keyboard. Here is one description from the Boston Globe in 2000.
I know that he is fully aware of the power of bloggers in politics as he was the one politician who made the most use of blogger conference calls last year at this time when his campaign was sagging. Even a lowly blogger such as myself was invited to participate in those calls and I was quite impressed with his openness to questions and follow-ups during the call. I even was able to solicit questions from my students and pose them to him during the call. Of course, now that he's wrapped up the nomination, I'm off the invitation list, but conservative bloggers are well aware of how astutely John McCain leveraged outreach to the blogosphere in a time when his campaign was doing poorly and didn't have much money.
Then Ace dug up a 2000 story from Forbes about how much McCain, as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Telecommunications knows about the whole field.
I expected any minute that there would be a rapid response ad and statement from the McCain campaign lashing out at Obama for mocking McCain's disability. Perhaps they'd join bloggers in pointing out that, if the Obama people were so smart, they could have googled around and found the same articles that the conservative bloggers have found. And they'd top it off with a list of McCain's accomplishments on whatever he's done on that subcommittee.
However, here it is two days later, and the supposedly rabid McCain campaign that jumped all over the lipstick comment within hours of Obama having made it and even had an ad up the next day have been silent about this whole matter. They're even refusing to answer questions. The Boston Globe has a story today about the flack that the Obama campaign is running in to with this ad, and tried unsuccessfully to get a comment from the McCain campaign.
So I'm wondering more about the dog that didn't bark. Why aren't the McCain folk all over this? Perhaps they don't want to bring up his injuries and give people the idea that he is handicapped. Perhaps the injuries aren't the reason he isn't using email. Maybe he just prefers talking to people on the telephone. Maybe he is as computer illiterate as he describes himself. Perhaps they just don't want to get off track with their real message, although they were certainly ready to jump on all htat manufactured outrage over the lipstick on a pig comment. Maybe they're waiting, having figured that people will be paying attention to the hurricane news and they can slap Obama back when they want. Maybe it's all those Rovian shenanigans forcing the Obama team to ridicule McCain over his computer illiteracy and then moving in with a stingray missile of a response. I figure that there must be some explanation since the McCain campaign hasn't been hesitant about playing tough in other instances. I just don't know what it is.
0 comments
When conservative bloggers started raising the issue of the Obama ad mocking McCain for not using a computer and whether McCain's POW injuries might account for his non-use of computers, I though that this was quite a blockbuster of a response to the Obama ad. Jonah Goldberg first posed the question on Friday and soon he'd turned up several references from earlier times explaining that he didn't use a computer because his old injuries made it painful to write on a keyboard. Here is one description from the Boston Globe in 2000.
McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.Then other bloggers turned up evidence that McCain is actually much savvier about the internet and telecommunications than he portrays himself as. He described himself as computer illiterate, but his 2000 campaign was actually a pioneer in using the web to raise money and rally supporters. Jacob Weisberg wrote in Slate about the then-revolutionary way that McCain was using the internet in his campaign against George W. Bush.
Six months ago, no one would have pegged McCain as the most cybersavvy of this year's crop of candidates. 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. But McCain's job as chairman of the Senate commerce committee forced him to learn about the Internet early on, and young Web entrepreneurs such as Jerry Yang and Jeff Bezos fascinate him. Well before he announced his exploratory committee, McCain had assimilated the notion that the Web could be vital to the kind of insurgent, anti-establishment campaign he wanted to run. In December 1998, he sent his longtime political aide Wes Gullett to Minnesota to study Jesse Ventura's successful gubernatorial campaign, which was the first to use the Web in an effective and innovative way. "Wes went up to Minnesota and talked to Ventura's people," McCain told reporters on the Straight Talk Express yesterday. "That's really where we got the idea."Kevin Aylward of Wizbang turned up this and other excerpts from Joe Trippi's book that credited the McCain 2000 campaign for paving the way for his work on the Howard Dean 2004 campaign.
It's no different with politics. I had watched the "1-800" populist candidates, like Jerry Brown and Ross Perot, and I closely followed John McCain's insurgent Republican presidential bid in 2000, the first national campaign to attempt to make use of the Internet. I held my breath that year - excited that someone was trying it, but terrified that they'd pull it off before I got the chance. They didn't. McCain managed to pull a decent number of people, about 40,000, into his campaign via the Internet, but it was the Newton of online political campaigns. The technology simply wasn't quite mature enough yet; enough snow hadn't been plowed.Well, that could mean just that McCain had hired smart guys to run his campaign, not that he really knew that much about it himself. But then isn't that what is important in a leader? Not that he can use the technology himself but that he understands the importance of the technology and knows how to find the right guys to make use of it.
I know that he is fully aware of the power of bloggers in politics as he was the one politician who made the most use of blogger conference calls last year at this time when his campaign was sagging. Even a lowly blogger such as myself was invited to participate in those calls and I was quite impressed with his openness to questions and follow-ups during the call. I even was able to solicit questions from my students and pose them to him during the call. Of course, now that he's wrapped up the nomination, I'm off the invitation list, but conservative bloggers are well aware of how astutely John McCain leveraged outreach to the blogosphere in a time when his campaign was doing poorly and didn't have much money.
Then Ace dug up a 2000 story from Forbes about how much McCain, as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Telecommunications knows about the whole field.
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.Wow, the "Senate's savviest technologist" is certainly not a description one would have thought of to apply to the John McCain who tells people in interviews that he is close to being a computer illiterate. Here he is in July of this year playing dumb with the New York Times about the internet.
Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.The Huffington Post has put up a series of pictures showing McCain using electronics from cell phones to a Blackberry. We don't know, of course, if he was the one who actually dialed the numbers or if a staff person dialed it and then handed it to him to talk. But, according to Jake Tapper in the quote linked below, his injuries don't make it impossible for him to type, just that it is painful if he does it for a period of time.
Q: Do you use a blackberry or email?
Mr. McCain: No
Mark Salter: He uses a BlackBerry, just ours.
Mr. McCain: I use the Blackberry, but I don’t e-mail, I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail. I read e-mails all the time, but the communications that I have with my friends and staff are oral and done with my cell phone. I have the luxury of being in contact with them literally all the time. We now have a phone on the plane that is usable on the plane, so I just never really felt a need to do it. But I do – could I just say, really – I understand the impact of blogs on American politics today and political campaigns. I understand that. And I understand that something appears on one blog, can ricochet all around and get into the evening news, the front page of The New York Times. So, I do pay attention to the blogs. And I am not in any way unappreciative of the impact that they have on entire campaigns and world opinion.
I expected any minute that there would be a rapid response ad and statement from the McCain campaign lashing out at Obama for mocking McCain's disability. Perhaps they'd join bloggers in pointing out that, if the Obama people were so smart, they could have googled around and found the same articles that the conservative bloggers have found. And they'd top it off with a list of McCain's accomplishments on whatever he's done on that subcommittee.
However, here it is two days later, and the supposedly rabid McCain campaign that jumped all over the lipstick comment within hours of Obama having made it and even had an ad up the next day have been silent about this whole matter. They're even refusing to answer questions. The Boston Globe has a story today about the flack that the Obama campaign is running in to with this ad, and tried unsuccessfully to get a comment from the McCain campaign.
The McCain campaign itself did not take issue with the Obama ad, and spokesmen for the Arizona senator did not return calls seeking comment.Jake Tapper is also on the story and reports that the McCain camp didn't want him to report on McCain's disability.
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.While McCain's liberal critics are sick of his talking about his POW experiences and have accused him of playing the POW card as a get-out-of-political-jams free card in order to score political points, he and his campaign seem strangely reluctant to use it here when it seems perfectly legitimate. Can't you just imagine the powerful spot they could make as they have one of his POW buddies look into the camera and say "Senator Obama is ridiculing John McCain for not sending emails. Perhaps Obama doesn't know that, as a result of torture he endured as a POW, torture that I witnessed, John McCain suffers pain when he tries to type on a keyboard." And then they could bring in his telecommunications background.
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.
So I'm wondering more about the dog that didn't bark. Why aren't the McCain folk all over this? Perhaps they don't want to bring up his injuries and give people the idea that he is handicapped. Perhaps the injuries aren't the reason he isn't using email. Maybe he just prefers talking to people on the telephone. Maybe he is as computer illiterate as he describes himself. Perhaps they just don't want to get off track with their real message, although they were certainly ready to jump on all htat manufactured outrage over the lipstick on a pig comment. Maybe they're waiting, having figured that people will be paying attention to the hurricane news and they can slap Obama back when they want. Maybe it's all those Rovian shenanigans forcing the Obama team to ridicule McCain over his computer illiteracy and then moving in with a stingray missile of a response. I figure that there must be some explanation since the McCain campaign hasn't been hesitant about playing tough in other instances. I just don't know what it is.
Labels: John McCain
Comments:
Post a Comment
