Politicians Hard At Work
Newt Gingrich is having problems with calling these crazy contraptions “smartphones” (via The Verge):
To call this a “cell phone” or a “handheld computer” fails to capture the change that has taken place. It is a change in kind, not just a change in scale, and just as drivers of the earliest cars called them “horseless carriages”, our language has not caught up.
So having failed for several days to come up with an adequate term for the device we call a “cell phone,” we want to open the discussion up to you. Let us know in the comments what you think we should name it, and we’ll feature the best ones in a future newsletter.
Hey dumbass, the automobile was indeed called the horseless carriage first, but what do we call those crazy vehicles with tires and steering wheels now? I believe the word is “car” and that’s short for “carriage”. And that spot in front of the steering wheel you put your Newt Gingrich bobble head figure? That flat area? I believe that’s called the “dashboard” because back in the horse carriage days, horses would “dash” and kick mud and shit up on the people in the carriage, so a board was required to shield people.
The point is, there’s a lot of things that should be keeping Newt up at night, but renaming the smartphone should not be one of them.
I can think of a whole bunch of more pressing issues he should be tackling.