Refrigerator Copy
Column published the week of September 22,
2008 www.theleeonline.com © 2008, Lee Ostaszewski
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How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Text the Ways |
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By Lee
Ostaszewski With all the terrible financial news
lately – investment firms closing, the government funding bailouts, dollar
menus being slashed, I thought we should step back a moment and focus on a
more uplifting story. A story which
shows that in this crazy world arcane concepts such as love, trust and, yes,
even commitment still abound. This is
a story about the precious bond that exists between a man, or a woman, and
the object of their affection. That’s right, I
am talking about working professionals and the PDAs
they love. In case you don’t know, PDA
stands for Personal Digital Assistants.
And the most popular and versatile is a BlackBerry;
basically, a cell phone on steroids. A recent survey, conducted by a group
that thinks up really strange things to ask on a survey, revealed that 35
percent of professionals said they would pick their PDA over their spouse. The stories I read about the survey,
which was commissioned by Sheraton Hotel and Resorts, didn’t explain what
people would pick their PDA over their spouse to do exactly. I’m almost afraid to ask. But since PDAs
are not sold in adult bookstores we can confidently assume that less than 60
percent of the positive respondents meant it in any kind of kinky sort of
way. Although, 87 percent of the survey
respondents did admit that they take their PDA into their bedroom with
them. They claim it is just to “check
email” before going to sleep. But
really, who believes that? Still, what
people do with personal electronic devices in the privacy of their own
bedroom, as sick and depraved as it may be (and it is sick and depraved), is
their own business. I think Sheraton
Hotels only wanted to know because they’re the ones cleaning up the rooms the
next morning. The real question, however, should not
be what is going on with PDAs behind closed
doors. Instead, considering the
obvious erosion to family values that this product has caused, the real
question should be who do we blame it on? The answer: John McCain. After all, he created the BlackBerry. |
Let me explain. As luck would have it, we are in the middle of
the presidential election homestretch after two years of slogging through the
initial campaign phase and the primaries.
This means almost hourly now something really stupid is said or done
on the campaign trail by a candidate or a person associated with a campaign. These stupid developments help to remind us
why it is so great living in a free, democratic society: The entertainment factor. You don’t get this sort of fun living in
So while it looked for a while as if Meanwhile, a senior advisor to McCain, a
guy with the law firm-sounding name of Douglas Holtz-Eakin
(or maybe it’s Holtz Eakin-Douglas), in response to
questions to name one thing McCain did to improve the economy as a senator,
held up his BlackBerry and told reporters (and this
is a real quote), “So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped
create.” Granted, it’s not the Internet, which we
all know Al Gore invented, but it is pretty good. Especially for someone who isn’t
technologically savvy in the sense that he thinks a BlackBerry
is a type of produce and a Bluetooth is dental disease. What Eakin-Douglas
Holtz meant, of course, was that McCain pushed for telecommunications
deregulation that helped spur the telecom revolution. McCain also pushed for banking and
financial institution deregulation.
And we know how that worked out.
I guess McCain’s batting .500. If all this
bad economic news is getting you down, maybe tonight you should open a bottle
of wine and snuggle on the sofa with your loved one. Then use it to text your spouse a message. ■ |