A Sept. 16 Newsmax article by Tim Collie claims that “A campaign ad mocking Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s computer literacy is backfiring on Democratic rival Barack Obama in some very painful ways,” going on to assert: “While McCain himself has often joked about his ignorance of email and phone texting, the Vietnam veteran rarely goes into the reason: his hands and fingers were shattered by wartime torture, making it painful to keyboard for any length of time.”
In fact, McCain has repeatedly professed his computer illiteracy and has apparently never cited his war injuries in doing so. Further, it responded to Obama’s ad not by citing war wounds but by asserting that “John McCain travels with a laptop.” Indeed, there are assistive devices out there — i.e., voice activation — that allow one to communicate with a computer without a keyboard.