My Father is Older than McCain!

Now, my Dad brought me into the computer world. So what is it with McCain? There is Old and then there is Old. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out how it was possible that McSame would say something one day and then say he didn’t say it a day later. Had he not heard of “Roll the Video Tape?” Did he not know about Youtube? Well it appears that it is worse than that. As I have previously pointed out he doesn’t even know how to use a computer, period! Which brings me to “there is Old, and then there is Older.” And apparently age has nothing do with it.

Charles M. Blow raises McCain’s age and how McCain is dealing with it in an Op-Ed in the NYT’s today. It is an amusing and not so amusing piece.

June 28, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

I’m So Old, (Insert Punch Line)

By CHARLES M. BLOW

John McCain, when I was born, you were nearly six years older than my mother. Now, seven years into her retirement, you want a new job: the hardest job in the world. Wow!

Obviously, my mother isn’t running for president, but her age gives me a context for considering yours. And within that context, your age gives me pause.

Apparently, I’m not alone. In a Quinnipiac University poll of swing states (Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania) published last week, nearly a quarter of respondents said that your age made it less likely that they would vote for you. It wasn’t just the young who had an issue with it either. More than 20 percent of those 55 and older agreed. And, while one would expect a partisan divide, independents leaned more toward the Democratic point of view. That should give you pause.

Fair or not, this is a serious hurdle for you. So, why is it that you can’t seem to stop making light of it? That is a bad idea. (Imagine Barack Obama making a string of self-depreciating black jokes. See, bad idea.) Let’s review.

It was disconcerting when you joked on “Saturday Night Live” that we should be looking for someone “very, very, very, old” to be the next president.

I cringed when you flubbed a joke on MTV about being “older than dirt” with “more scars than Frankenstein.”

It was alarming, not quaint, when you sheepishly confessed your computer illiteracy — in the age of Google, YouTube and MySpace, when jihadists maintain their own Web sites and when you yourself are staring down the cannon of Obama’s Borg-like Internet juggernaut.

It is confusing when you sardonically call Obama a “young man.” That makes me ponder your age even more. After all, how old do you have to be to call a 46-year-old a young man? (Old enough to have to issue more than 1,100 pages of medical records to prove that you’re “fit,” I guess. The “young man” issued a one-page statement.)

Add to this joshing grandpa shtick the vast and immutable visual disparity between you and the cover boy, and you get two negatives that do not equal a positive. The camera loves him. You, not so much. It sucks the life out of you, and amplifies your awkward aesthetic — the wispy comb-over, the stilted grins, the blank expressions.

If I were your image consultant, I would start with two words: Stop it! There is no political Botox in your self-flagellating humor. Stay stoic. Act your age, and stop talking about it. And if you must discuss it, laud its merits — wisdom, not wit.

By the way, Senator McCain, my mother has learned to use a computer. It’s easy. No joke.

Now, my Father is a Warrior on the Internet and more than just proficient with his knowledge and use of a computer. McCain has no excuse. It is truly frightening to me, as a well known Luddite, that this man who wants to be the President of the United States in the Age of Computing not only doesn’t use a computer but apparently has no desire to know about using a computer and depends on his wife for computing. This may make Cindy more qualified than John for the highest office in the country in this telecomputing age.

This lack of interest on McSame’s part is one of the most troubling parts of his candidacy. Now he is like Bush in that he has an entitled Frat-boy Attitude and is Flip-Flopping and Pandering to the Bush Base as well as wanting to start Armageddon by bombing Iran. I personally think that we have had enough of that.

But at least GW knows how turn on a computer and can use email.

McCain: Worse than Bush!