E-mails can’t be beyond McCain

Re “E-mail to Obama: dishonest ad, wrong audience,” Opinion, Sept. 16

I am a Marine Corps veteran and served not one but two combat tours in Vietnam. I have met more former POWs than I can recall. I find it insulting to my intelligence for Jonah Goldberg to state that John McCain cannot use a computer because his captors broke his arms and fingers, preventing him from typing on a keyboard.

Give us a break. If McCain can prance around the country shaking dozens and dozens of hands every day, he can certainly tap on a keyboard.

If he can’t, then he should do as another former POW I have spent time with does. He is now paralyzed and types on his keyboard with a pencil he holds in his mouth.

J.R. Widener

Malibu

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Goldberg is going to have to come to grips with a painful fact: McCain is a geezer. How do I know? I am a geezer myself, and I recognize the condition a mile off.

Oh, yes, I revel in the idea that 70 is the new 60. I ride my bicycle 40 minutes every day; I still conduct an active business; I can still hammer a nail; and I take corners at 50 mph in my Porsche.

But physically I am not what I used to be, and neither is McCain. A fellow geezer can spot it in the careful way he carries himself. And, in a very short time, it will get worse.

He thinks about it every day. He thinks about it before anything else, before what he’s going to have for breakfast and before the state of the union.

So the question may boil down to this: Do you want a president who can bound from his bed clear-eyed and alive, or can you wait around while he adjusts for a little spinal curvature, takes an aspirin for his arthritis, stands at the toilet for three minutes, steams in the shower for half an hour to clear his head, nods off after lunch and takes half a dozen pills every day?

Even if I could embrace his policies (which I admit I don’t), I could not vote for a fellow geezer to fill the top spot in the nation.

Irwin Spector

Toluca Lake

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Although I do not always agree with Goldberg’s columns, I generally find them to be based in some sort of logic. However, in this one, he fails to make a relevant point.

Although at 40 I am desperately behind on technological advances, my 70-year-old mother, who is stricken with Alzheimer’s, is able to send e-mail. My former co-worker, who was born without arms, was able to use hands-free technology seven years ago.

I recommend that Goldberg follow his own advice and do a simple Google check for “hands-free e-mail.” It will yield 13 million results.

Even I am able to accomplish this small feat. Computer usage is now the standard in most fields -- even for folks with disabilities, not just the liberal, young webheads.

Kristin Jaramillo

Los Angeles

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I was astounded when I saw Obama’s campaign ad. Is his camp not aware that senior citizens vote in huge numbers? I have never met a senior citizen who does not vote -- even the disabled seniors I know vote via absentee ballot.

I wonder if Obama lost senior citizen voters with his ad. And who did he gain? Young people who send e-mails?

It was not wise to run this ad. It belittled the elderly and had a disrespectful tone.

Robin Hvidston

Upland