Many have made light in this political season of McCain's computer illiteracy. The man has never sent an email, checked a website, downloaded a file, watched a youtube video. "Ha ha, the old man can't use the computer machine."
Let us not make light of this. Let us take this as the serious issue that it is: in an era where the computer is the equivalent of a pen in the 20th century, John McCain is an illiterate. He cannot use the chief communication tool of our era, the sole instrument of all businessmen's correspondence, and the breakthrough upon which nearly all present technology relies. He cannot use the tool which will be the future of all technology and communication.
I realize that in this day, for some reason, stupidity reigns. People decide presidents based on which one they would like to have a beer with. 'Intellectual' is actually a slur to a common voter. But it isn't as if we're asking the man to calculate a derivative or plot a marginal profit curve. We do not wish him to program C code or debug some php. We are asking him to do what a majority of even elderly people can do: send email, watch videos, understand what blogging and RSS are.
There are clearly many things John McCain does not understand. He does not understand the difference between sweet crude and heavy crude. He does not understand what refining capacity is. He does not appreciate the difference between an embryo and a fetus, what a post-cold-war foreign policy should look like, that Muslims have two distinct major sects, or that pregnancy is not a pathological disease worth treating.
But email? Let's be sensible.