The iPad is a huge hit in the United States Congress. I mean, passing any sort of meaningful banking reform is apparently out of the question with these guys , but there’s always time for the iPad. Just amazing, really.
The story is that several members of Congress, including Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, are head-over-heels in love with the iPad. My immediate reaction was, “Um, you do know that the American people have a very low opinion of you guys right now, right? It’s probably not the time to be gloating about how your $500 toy is the new hotness. There’s a lot of people out there who are out of work and would love to have an extra $500 to blow on a shiny piece of plastic, but that’s not going to happen any time soon.”
That was my first reaction. Then I cooled down a bit and thought to myself, “Well, if they’re just using the iPad to replace their BlackBerry, reading and sending e-mail to their staff, checking their calendar, and so forth, then that’s probably not such a big deal.”
There’s an “iPad caucus,” too, which I guess is trying to extol the merits of the device. Said one member, Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia:
We are really trying to engage people about ways to apply this technology. This is definitely the wave of the future. … We’re explaining to people that this could actually make us all more efficient, especially when you only have 24 hours in the day.
See? Innocent enough.
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But then you read something like this:
A small crowd of lawmakers gathered last week in the House Republican cloakroom, cheering on Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) as he wildly steered Chaffetz’s iPad in his hands, the tablet serving as the steering wheel for an iPad-compatible race car game.
Yeah, that’s pretty ridiculous.
Isn’t Congress great? I turn 25 next year, maybe I should run? My platform will be, “I won’t spend all day screwing around on my iPad. Oh, and I love America.”
