Q: What websites if any do you look at regularly?
Mr. McCain: Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously, everybody
watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico.
Sometimes RealPolitics, sometimes.
(Mrs. McCain and Ms. Buchanan both interject: “Meagan’s blog!”)
Mr. McCain: Excuse me, Meagan’s blog. And we also look at the blogs
from Michael and from you that may not be in the newspaper, that are
just part of your blog.
Q: But do you go on line for yourself?
Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and
I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to
be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am
becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information
that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before
anything else.
Q: Do you use a blackberry or email?
Mr. McCain: No
Mark Salter: He uses a BlackBerry, just ours.
Mr. McCain: I use the Blackberry, but I don’t e-mail, I’ve never felt
the particular need to e-mail. I read e-mails all the time, but the
communications that I have with my friends and staff are oral and done
with my cell phone. I have the luxury of being in contact with them
literally all the time. We now have a phone on the plane that is usable
on the20plane, so I just never really felt a need to do it. But I do –
could I just say, really – I understand the impact of blogs on American
politics today and political campaigns. I understand that. And I
understand that something appears on one blog, can ricochet all around
and get into the evening news, the front page of The New York Times.
So, I do pay attention to the blogs. And I am not in any way
unappreciative of the impact that they have on entire campaigns and
world opinion.
Q: You read newspapers then.
Mr. McCain: I read them most all every day.
Q: You and Obama are both newspaper and book readers. Do you read them
in the old paper version or do you read them online?
Mr. McCain: I love to read them in the print form, and the reason why I
do is because so much, the prominence of the story matters. If I read a
story and say, Oh my God, did you see this? But it’s back on A26, it
doesn’t have the impact of what are still – even though it’s declining
– what are still, what are hundreds of millions of American picking up
an looking at today. And that’s why I really think that reading it is,
it helps me more than, now, because I don’t read all the newspapers – I
don’t see, for example, the L.A. Times every day, or the San Francisco
Chronicle, or the Arizona Republic when I’m away. So we
go then, of course, online, and look at them.’
I really do believe that one can be as old or as young as he/she desires. I am definitely not an ageist and for the sake of full disclosure-my father reads blogs, googles and logs on and off his PC with ease. But the above conversation is a bit troubling because it touches upon whether a prospective President can relate to the present. And in another revelatory moment, if not for Senator Obama (as of late) adopting centrist policies and touching on some of the pathologies afflicting minority communities, I would more than likely be supporting McCain. And what about the elitist rap that Obama has been getting? The Obama clan are part of the nouveau riche-prior to their recent fortune; they were highly educated middle class strugglers like so many other Americans. Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill?
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