John McCain Is So Adorable When He Talks About The Internet

Oh come now, will everyone please stop pickin' on poor John McCain for his limited knowledge of the future techmologies? This is something that irks political writers on the Internet to a strange degree (probably because it means McCain cannot give them page views.) Even McCain's best friend Jon Chait of The New Republic has been calling him "President Grampa Simpson," which is Ageist. While many of us are more concerned about McCain for other reasons -- the fact that he is solidly to the right of George W. Bush on foreign policy, for example -- we understand how problematic it would be to have a president who uses Yahoo! instead of Google. And yet it's still hilarious whenever McCain tries to defend his technological know-how to a crowd of nerds, as he did yesterday in liberal San Francisco.

McCain was fundraising in the Bay Area yesterday. They are all very wealthy out there and therefore own computers. So here are some funny things McCain said to these people, about computers:

• "Am I a tech freak? No. And I don't like to text message because I'd rather call somebody on the telephone."

• "I do understand the importance of the computer. I understand the importance of the blogs."

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

• "It doesn't mean that I have to e-mail people," he said. "Now, I read e-mails," he added, saying his staff is "constantly showing them to me as the news breaks during the day."

• "I use a computer almost every day. I go on different web sites ... ours and the various media."

• "We passed the ban on Internet taxes, which was vital, I think, in the growth of the Internet. We had constant hearings ... about new technology that was being developed."

See? He understands "the importance of the blogs," which is more than we can say; also, he *reads* his e-mail, whereas the average Internet user just clicks "Inbox" every 1.8 seconds because the 15-second automatic refresh option is just too long . He knows everything about the Internet. He even banned taxes. On the Internet!

 McCain defends his tech smarts in S.F. [San Francisco Chronicle]