BlackBerry Buzz

I just got back from a much-too-short vacation, during which I turned off my BlackBerry, dropped it into a drawer, and didn't even look at it for three days. (This also prevented my girlfriend from fulfilling the promise, which she had been making for some time, to toss it overboard.)

Speaking of BlackBerries, the internet is all abuzz with headlines like this:

"Campaign: John McCain Invented the BlackBerry"

My first thought: "#$%& you, John McCain, for making me reachable by email at 3:00 a.m." Just because Hillary Clinton is ready to take the call doesn't mean I'm ready to take the email.

Then I read the actual posts by Wired's normally-dependable Sarah Lai Stirland and Politico's Jonathan Martin about this seemingly ridiculous claim. Both quote as their source McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who waved his BlackBerry in the air as evidence of developments in telecommunications over the past 15 years.

That's not my spin. That's Martin's account:

"Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate's top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry. 'He did this,' Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. 'Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did.'"

Holtz-Eakin is taking too much credit for his boss - after all, no Senate Committee can or should really take credit for the innovations that companies like Apple, Research In Motion, AT&T, and others have made through their private research and development. But can anyone actually read this as a claim - even a mistaken one - that John McCain invented the BlackBerry?

The folks who are making hay over this are looking to create a parallel with the storm around Al Gore's much-ridiculed "inventing the internet" gaffe. Of course, Gore's claimed credit through a direct quote ("During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet"). Drawing similarities with a staffer waving a prop is a stretch to say the least.