You know, I’ve finally figured out why ourt friends on the left are so clueless about the American people, and Jesse Taylor of Pandagon helped me.
- But He Was Tortured!
Andrew Romano is complaining that we’re expecting too much from McCain when it comes to the intertubes.
For one thing, McCain’s computer illiteracy doesn’t reflect a lack of curiosity–it reflects a lack of necessity. Over the past 10 years, most adult Americans have encountered and explored computers primarily in the workplace, where the ability to communicate and find information on the Internet has gradually become a required skill. But McCain’s job in the U.S. Senate–where all communication and information has to be filtered through staffers–has actually made fluency more difficult to achieve (or at least less necessary). When aides are responding to your messages and briefing you on every imaginable subject, the incentive to get online sort of disappears.
Here’s the problem – the Internet is rapidly becoming the basic communication tool of our times. To use an analogy that’s more McCain’s speed, it would be like Theodore Roosevelt showing up in the White House unsure of what a telephone was, or FDR not knowing how to tune a radio or Nixon not understanding how to turn on a television. Nobody expects McCain to design a web site or produce his own Youtube videos. Please, God, no Youtube videos from the McCain camp.
But we do expect him to be at least passingly familiar with a computer and/or the internet, able to understand its basic use, particularly as it’s one of the building blocks of the 21st century economy. Nobody expected FDR to assemble the microphone he used for his fireside chats, but it would have been mightily fucked up if he didn’t understand how people made their fancy sound boxes steal his voice.
One of the Pandagon categories Mr Taylor selected for his post was Elitism. I think that was a wise choice, but for what I expect would be a completely different reason than he would give. Blatantly obvious from Mr Taylor’s post is the view that, if you aren’t internet-savvy, why you’re really nobody.
One of Pandagon’s frequent commenters, Mike Ess, put it even more baldly:
The computer is just a tool, like a pair of pliers or a screwdriver, or more analogous, a pen and paper — albeit more complex. And if you don’t know how to use it at a minimal level (which is all email and internet access requires), you are missing an important capability as a human being…
And a commenter styling himself Kodiak wrote:
at my office, you can’t get above the rank of “no corporate title” without being issued a blackberry and expected to use it a ridiculous amount. There’s no excuse for being out of contact with the office if there’s an emergency unless you’re on planned leave in a cell-dead zone (like backpacking the adirondacs or some such).
That McCain wouldn’t understand the importance of the quick three sentence reply that all senior managment I know have mastered makes me wonder just how heavily his staff has insulated him. Does he also believe the internet is like a series of tubes?
I don’t understand how it’s acceptable to give him a pass on standard working knowledge. He couldn’t get a job doing anything else in a corporate environment if he refused to deal with the intricacies of e-mail communication and scheduling. Why should we expect less from the highest public office than from Joe in the mailroom??
John McCain isn’t running to become a corporate officer where he’ll be on the road and needing a blackberry; he’ll be surrounded by dozens, if not hundreds, of staffers. Kodiak’s comment is kind of like expecting the President to carry the “football,” the case with the nuclear codes, personally.
But, more than that, this speaks to something some of our friends on the left simply don’t understand. Barack Hussein Obama touched on it in his famous “bitter” comments before the Pennsylvania primary, at least obliquely: they simply don’t understand that there are people out there, millions of people out there, who just Aren’t Like Them.
I run a concrete plant for a living, and maybe 25% of the drivers have a computer at home that they use. They are hard-working men, who do a good job, and there’s nothing in particular about their jobs or their lives which require a computer or the internet.
And there are thousands of jobs like that out there. I’ve asked the question before: if all the doctors and all the garbage collector went on strike at the same time, which ones would most people miss first? And, somehow seemingly unnoticed by so many of our friends on the left is the fact that there are all kinds of srvice and manufacturing jobs that have to get done, jobs on which they depend for their comfort and their lifestyles, which don’t require computer literacy. Without the guys who place and smooth the asphault, our friends on the left would be driving on dirt roads. Without the men who pick up their garbage, they’d be piled up in trash and stink. But to them, as Steve LeBonne put it, not using the internet or being particularly interested or curious about it, is a sign of “a really stupid man.”
The men who drive concrete mixers for me might not be all that interested in computers, or able to use them, but the things they build will still be out there, twenty, forty, sixty or more years from now; just what will some of our computer-savvy friends on the left do that will last that long?
This is what Senator Obama missed in his “bitter” comment, that he simply did not understand and did not appreciate that there are good, hard-working people — a whole lot of whom are also voters — who are simply different from him in culture and lifestyle and thinking and aspirations and desires. Reading the Pandagonistae, it’s obvious that they have that same cultural ego-centrism, and a total lack of respect for others.
God, you’re an idiot.
Funny, but an idiot.
Why, thank you, Mr Taylor! That comment was so gracious and profound that I added it to my Testimonials list; hope you don’t mind!
Still, perhaps an idiot like myself could use a bit more explanation as to why what I said was so terribly wrong.
I think you are missing a point here. John McCain isn’t trying to be a truck driver. He is trying to be the CEO of the country. While it may be true that you can do lots of jobs in the U.S. without any computer skills, there are fewer and fewer of them.
As an example, some day in the not too distant future, truck drivers will fill out timesheets on an intranet site. They will not get paper checks, nor paper W-2′s. The good news is that they will have some time to ramp up in transition period. They will grumble, some will quit to work in the ever-shrinking pool of people that don’t need computer skills.
John McCain not only needs to be able to do simple things on the Internet, he will be guiding policy on the Internet. Over the past seven years I have come to loathe the idea that a President doesn’t have to know about “stuff” because he has people for that.
I know that I’m not going to sway you on this, but I think your post deserved more than a passing comment.
Mr Geek, I think you have missed the point. My point is that Mr Taylor and the commenters on Pandagon were expressing more than “problems” with John McCain not being internet savvy, but writing as though virtually everyone who is not wired in and computer literate is somehow just less of a person, someone at whom they looked down their collective noses.
This was one of the things into which Hillary Clinton tapped during the last half of the primary season: she realized what was happening in this.
Why does Senator McCain “need to be able to do simple things on the Internet?” The simple things are what presidents have staff to do. After all, if he’s elected he’ll also be guiding policy for medical care; does he need to know how to do simple surgery? He’ll be guiding policies on highway construction; does he need to be able to pour concrete?
Why does Senator McCain “need to be able to do simple things on the Internet?”
Maybe he needs it to play World of Warcraft like Chuck Norris. (Ok, that remark just exposed my total nerdiness).
All kidding aside, I have to laugh when I hear people scream that the president needs to know how to use a computer or how to scan his groceries or what have you. These are not people buying their stuff at Wal-Mart and surfing the internet for interesting articles. John McCain will probably be the last president who isn’t internet savvy, but that isn’t going to affect his ability to do the job unless we’re now supposed to push the nuclear button by blackberry or something.
Your post brought to mind a similar discovery I had as a young pup at the local newspaper. Those of us who worked in Editorial (writers and editors and page designers) tended to look down–though we didn’t usually admit it–on the paste up people who slapped the pages together (yes, this was pre-pagination). I started out life as a paste up artist, so I didn’t have that built in snobbery against “the Other” like most of my colleagues, but nonetheless, it was fairly obvious that those doing production must be less intelligent because they usually had no more than a high school education.
This stereotype saw the glaring light of day when a group of us (editorial types and printers) played Trivial Pursuit. My group consisted of me, a friend (both of us writers/copy editors) and a printer. My friend and I constantly vetoed his answer offerings only to discover he was right every time. That made me realize the printers weren’t as dumb as all those oh-so-well-educated reporters and editors thought they were.
The elitism and ageism at Pandagon is humorous to watch. Like teenagers, they assume that the world only exists as they see it, which is why they are so shocked when their candidates lose so often. If they spent a little more time with normal folks, they might come to some different conclusions.
Sharon wrote:
One of the jokes around the Pico household is my constant claim that I am the standard by which normal is judged. The thing is, I know that I’m joking. When it comes to some of our friends on the left, I’m not certain that all of them realize that yes, there are people who are different from them, and that yes, that’s perfectly normal and understandable.
I’m old enough to remember when all college students were rebellious, and they showed their individuality by wearing faded and torn blue jeans and long, scruffy hair — and by God, every last one of them conformed!
As you might suspect, I disagree. I want a President that is intellectually curious. This isn’t a position that can afford to rely on staffers to print out the important emails for him. I know the guys on the right like to talk about a global war on terrorism, but the next front is going to be a technological war.
We are battling the rest of the globe in a fight for technological superiority. If we lose, we lose jobs, power and many of the things that we like about living in America. How is McCain going to deal with issues like net neutrality, nano technology, bio-ethics and cyber warfare if he can’t use “the Google”?
OK, rant over…
Mr Geek: You have assumed that, because John McCain isn’t up to speed on e-mail that he isn’t “intellectually curious” on anything. Whoever becomes president — hopefully not Barack Obama — will have to deal with a very wide range of issues; it is extremely improbable that he’ll be well-versed in every issue that arises.
Do you think that the President will spend his time using “the Google” to look up the information he needs to take decisions? That might not be the wisest use of his time, though if he happens to come across Common Sense Political Thought, we can at least be certain that he’ll get the right answers to every important question!