Flap continues to wait for Barack Obama’s apology to John McCain for mocking his war disability but somehow do not think it is coming.

But, Jake Tapper over at ABC News today has this piece further explaining why it is painful for John McCain to use a computer keyboard.

Assuredly McCain isn’t comfortable talking about this — and the McCain campaign discouraged me from writing about this — but the reason the aged Arizonan doesn’t use a computer or send email is because of his war wounds.

I realize some of the nastier liberals in the blogosphere will see this as McCain once again “playing the POW card,” but it’s simply a fact: typing on a regular keyboard for any sustained period of time bothers McCain physically.

He can type, he occasionally does type, but in general the injuries he sustained as a POW — ones that make it impossible for him to raise his arms high enough to comb his hair — mean that small tasks make his shoulders ache, so he tries to avoid any repetitive exercise.

Again, it’s not that he can’t type, he just by habit avoids when he can repetitive exercise involving his arms. He does if he has to, as with handshaking or autographs.

It’s certainly possible that the Obama campaign did not know this, since McCain makes it sound in interviews as if this is a matter of choice, not discomfort because of his war wounds.

“I read my e-mails, but I don’t write any,” McCain told Fortune Magazine in 2006. “I’m a Neanderthal – I don’t even type. I do have rudimentary capabilities to call up some websites, like the New York Times online, that sort of stuff. No laptop. No PalmPilot. I prefer my schedule on notecards, which I keep in my jacket pocket.”

So, now that we have cleared up this matter as the Boston Globe sort of does belatedly here, how about Team Obama pulling this ad and apologizing to John McCain?

Of course, some will argue and have at Flapsblog on another thread that McCain could use voice recognition software but with the help of his wife and staff why bother – and it does take time to master? 

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.

The point is that John McCain is not technological challenged or behind. But, If Obama wants to portray John McCain as too old then go ahead and confront the issue directly.

Obama wan’t do it because he would be charged with blatant AGEISM and lose every senior vote in every key battleground state.

Team Barry has made another GAFFE. 

Barry, apologize and move on……

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