During the 2008 presidential race, John McCain’s online team has often used web video to get the candidate’s major campaign themes out onto the internet.

But an offhand verbal riposte by one of the members of that team has turned into a viral video that’s providing just the kind of attention they don’t want. It’s reviving the idea that the Republican presidential candidate is clueless when it comes to technology.

Speaking at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York Monday, McCain deputy e-campaign director Mark Soohoo responded to a comment about McCain’s self-professed computer illiteracy by saying that McCain is "aware of the internet."

The comment, caught on video and uploaded to the web on Tuesday by Micah Sifry, one of the two organizers of the conference, quickly made the rounds on the web and on Twitter.

It eventually provided fodder for one of CNN’s regular off-beat stories done by its national correspondent Jeanne Moos, who took to the streets to conduct an unscientific survey of what Americans both young and old thought of McCain’s computer illiteracy.

Everyone but one person interviewed agreed that McCain should know how to use a computer.

One woman exclaimed: "Oh, that’s absolutely ridiculous."

Even Hu Jintao, China’s president, surfs the web.

To be fair, what this online branding obscures is the fact that McCain is probably more familiar with, and better versed than most of the roster of the 2008 presidential candidates on the nuances of telecommunications and internet policy because of his work as a longtime member and former chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation — work for which he has received frequent praise from consumer advocacy groups and think tanks.

So with all this in mind, take our poll.

Explain your vote in the comments section.