Here’s Congressman Ed Mahkey of Bawston using our iPhone to draw attention to himself. Oh, sure, supposedly this was some big event about freedom and the goal was to force us to make the iPhone available on any wireless carrier. But let’s be honest. The real reason was so Mr. Ed could get up there and hold up an iPhone and look all cool with his flowing gray locks and his faux Kennedy accent and “tawk” about “the wondahs of wyuless technawlogy” and the “sheeah wizahdwy of wyuless enjuneewing.” Look, Mahkey Mahk. You’re sixty-one years old. There’s no point in grandstanding, because you’re never going to run for president. You’re also not going to tell us how to manage our iPhone business, unless you want to apply for a job at Apple and work your way up through the ranks like everyone else, which, let’s face it, you couldn’t do, since you’ve spent your entire adult life in Congress and you don’t know squat about business or technology. If you did, you’d realize that the market will decide this on its own. If we’re making a huge mistake going with AT&T (and I’ll admit, I sometimes lie awake at night wondering this myself) our customers will let us know, and we’ll have to change. But please. Go ahead. Pose all you want beside my shiny hip new device which is restoring a sense of childlike wonder to people’s lives. Just don’t presume to tell me how to run my company. Bokay? We square on this? Peace out, Mayor Quimby.

By the way, Al Gore tried to put the kibosh on this “iPhone hearing,” but it turns out he’s got no juice at all in Washington these days. None. Zip. They’re tired of his shtick like everyone else. My God if you could have heard him yesterday going on about his friggin concert. Ugh. Groan. I put my iPhone on the desk and let him ramble and then picked up fifteen minutes later and said, “Wow, yeah, cool, hum, hey, yeah, oh hey I gotta take this can I call you back?”