# Obama ridicules McCain's disability **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 13, 2008, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493 "2008-09-13T22:30:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/161 "2008-09-14T14:37:05Z")
> [@Atomicktom](#): > > For 5 years, McCain didn’t even have a desk. And, because of that, moving his keyboard is _painful_. Why do you hate America? For 5 years, Mccain had no lap. They kept him painfully stretched out. Now, he can no longer have a lap. OR For 5 years, McCan had nothing BUT a lap because they always kept him painfully folded over. Now, he can no longer have a lap. Either works. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/162 "2008-09-14T14:47:33Z")
> [@Harborwolf](#): > > **Jack Batty** : Yeah. I’m fine with a chief exec. who can’t do something a middle schooler could do because you still haven’t told me why I shouldn’t. What is he going to need to “get done” on a pc that he cannot get done some other way? Fine. Maybe someday we can perfect the technology needed so that we can just suspend McCain’s head in a jar in the Oval Office and he can run the country that way. I’ve told you. For the umpteenth time, I’ve told you. You don’t think it’s important for the Chief Executive of this land to be competent enough to pull off this: \ Fine. Sleep will in your little science fiction land where the only quality he needs is an ability to form words. ---
**Author:** ![Harborwolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Harborwolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harborwolf)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/163 "2008-09-14T14:50:11Z")
> [@A\_shameful\_cracka](#): > > You said they were ridiculing his disability. McCain has never said he could not use a computer because of his disability. It’s been pointed out repeatedly that, even considering his disability, there are ways to use one with no discomfort. Your assertion that they are ridiculing his disability is dishonest to the extreme. > > I’m sure that, if your assertion that lifting his hands to desktop level is painful is true, it was painful for him to lift his arms to flip switches in a jet, yet he persevered because he wanted to, yet you assert that it was either too painful or too much trouble for him to figure out a way to overcome his disability to use one of the most important tools of the 21st century. [Cite.](http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/0529/053_print.html) > [@](#): > > 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. Just to correct the assumption that it’s his shoulders that make it difficult to use a computer. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/164 "2008-09-14T14:52:17Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > Let’s assume that using a computer is physically possible for John McCain but taxing, painful, difficult, or causes some other discomfort. And there we come to the crux of the biscuit. You are the only one assuming that. And for the thinnest of reasons. And that reason seems to be so that you can become outraged that THAT is the issue, and not McCain being out of touch with the mainstream. Physical ability does not enter into the picture, except in you’re manufactured outrage. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/165 "2008-09-14T14:52:50Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Calling a black man “boy” seems to be standard fare for Republicans these days. It’s still racist. Ah yes, the faux political outrage season. Mate, it’s pretty bloody clear my little phrasing has fuck all to do with American idiocies of the Jim Crow era, nor am I am I a member of any of your political parties. ---
**Author:** ![Harborwolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Harborwolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harborwolf)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/166 "2008-09-14T14:52:57Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > Fine. > > Maybe someday we can perfect the technology needed so that we can just suspend McCain’s head in a jar in the Oval Office and he can run the country that way. Worked for Nixon. That is to say it will work for Nixon. Must be chronologically correct. > [@](#): > > I’ve told you. For the umpteenth time, I’ve told you. You don’t think it’s important for the Chief Executive of this land to be competent enough to pull off this: > \ > Fine. Sleep will in your little science fiction land where the only quality he needs is an ability to form words. Or to read words. Or to hear words. You know, the things we used to do in ye olden dayes. Must say I’m rather frustrated to be told how important it is for McCain to be able to use the internet/computers/surf for porn and not have one person provide a single credible argument to back it up. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/167 "2008-09-14T14:57:26Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > I believe that it is B. > One thing I find interesting in this thread is the complete lack of compassion on the Demo side. Let’s assume that using a computer is physically possible for John McCain but taxing, painful, difficult, or causes some other discomfort. The attitude here is “Fuck him, he should use a computer anyways.” when for years and years he’s managed to work around the disability. In other words, you believe that someone should access information in the way YOU prefer them to rather than a way that > > 1. Works for them > 2. Is more comfortable for them Oh bollocks, they simply don’t believe the story being pimped he’s a bloody cripple, can’t type. Reasonable enough. Hardly seems the crip from observation. Faux outrage, recognize, overcome it. Now, bang away on the idiot narrow mindedness of focusing rare resources on the triviality of McC man not using email for whatever bloody reason, and the inherent techno Snobbery, there you’re on solid ground, don’t sound like a hypocritical whiner going on in a poltiically correct manner like the Old Left, and have political gold. Here we are, a jihad against faux political outrage. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/168 "2008-09-14T14:59:14Z")
> [@](#): > > McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. Now he’s talking out of two sides of his mouth. How does an “inveterate devotee of email” sashay right into, “I’m learning how to email”? It’s kind of like me saying, I’m an inveterate devotee of High French Cuisine and I’m learning how to boil water. And I would really like to see how his injuries make it hard to press keys on a keyboard. I think he’s pissing and moaning about being a hunt-and-peck typist, as opposed to his qwerty-quality wife. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/169 "2008-09-14T15:01:49Z")
> [@Harborwolf](#): > > Must say I’m rather frustrated to be told how important it is for McCain to be able to use the internet/computers/surf for porn and not have one person provide a single credible argument to back it up. How about we conduct an experiment. Stop replying to the thread. I mean physically. In response to this post, get your wife, or girlfriend, or boyfriend, or kid, or friend, or whoever to do the typing while you dictate. In fact, do that for the next week. Then come back and tell us all how simple that is to pull off. ---
**Author:** ![Harborwolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Harborwolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harborwolf)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/170 "2008-09-14T15:05:51Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > Now he’s talking out of two sides of his mouth. How does an “inveterate devotee of email” sashay right into, “I’m learning how to email”? Just to throw out a guess, he probably reads and sends email out with his wife doing the grunt work (typing and what not) > [@](#): > > And I would really like to see how his injuries make it hard to press keys on a keyboard. I think he’s pissing and moaning about being a hunt-and-peck typist, as opposed to his qwerty-quality wife. [Cite.](http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/09/14/obama_ad_takes_heat_for_mccain_cyber_shot/) > [@](#): > > McCain suffered broken bones that still prevent him from fully lifting his arms and **has lost mobility as a result of fractured fingers**. Bolding mine. And **Jack** , as clever an idea as that little experiment is, it does absolutely nothing to answer _ **why the president needs to be able to use a computer.** _ ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2008, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493/171 "2008-09-14T15:08:56Z")
Y’know what, guys? If this is what is going to pass for Great Debate between now and the election, I am going to prohibit all discussion about the presidential race until November 30. And I’m not going to bother moving this to the Pit, open your own threads there. This one is closed. [/Modding] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-ridicules-mccains-disability/463493.md?page=8)