Letter to President-Elect with recommendations on how to deal with BlackBerry withdrawal

Posted by Mauricio on Nov 17, 2008 at 8:36 PM | Comments

Sheryl left a comment about a letter she wrote up that would help President-Elect Barack Obama get over his BlackBerry withdrawals. Here is an excerpt:

Dear Mr. President-Elect Obama:
Say it ain’t so! From one BlackBerry addict to another, I feel your pain (as another Democratic president used to say with faux emotion). There, on mobile.nytimes.com, I read the words on the tiny screen in the palm of my hand and almost dropped my precious BlackBerry on the floor: “Say Goodbye to BlackBerry? Yes He Can, Maybe.” This, on page A1, of The New York Times.

Yes, it’s sad but true: Your #1 New Year’s Resolution is you will have to surrender your BlackBerry, sir. Apparently, after you take the oath of office in front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2009, it will be way too risky for you to carry a BlackBerry and send text and email messages. Not because you have to worry about pick-pockets stealing the thing mind you: Unlike other Washingtonians who have to fear losing their wallet, purse or mobile device on the Capitol’s streets, you’ll never to worry about that again because you’ll have Secret Service agents at your side every moment of every day for the rest of your natural life.

The problem actually comes down to system security and presidential privacy: Hackers could hack into your email. Worse, every presidential email could be subject to public viewing and press snooping one day. We can’t have that now, can we?

Maybe this Presidential thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, after all. You’re facing two wars, the worst global economic meltdown since the Great Depression, rising unemployment, $700 billion in boondoggle government bailouts, the Detroit automakers and a long line of CEOs begging for bailouts for their own companies, the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, a ballooning federal deficit, and on and on the list goes.

Mr. President-Elect: Between us, America and the entire world seem to be having a collective nervous breakdown — and you can’t even bum a damned cigarette. That’s because Michelle made you quit your three-Marlboro-a-day habit. Since then, we hear you’ve been chewing Nicorette gum to deal with the withdrawal symptoms. Poor thing.

You truly have my full sympathies, Mr. President-Elect. You truly must be the most cool-headed man alive. Just that short list from the even longer list of problems you will confront would be more than enough to send most mortals jumping off the nearest bridge. Lighting up for a sneaky smoke or two on the sly wouldn’t even begin to touch the anxiety level most of us mere mortals would have just thinking about being in your shoes.

So now you have another addiction to kick, and addiction it is. According to a Rutgers University study, BlackBerry devices are so addictive that people may need to be weaned off them with addiction treatment similar to that given to drug users.

And that is an excerpt because the whole article is a little over twice as long. Pretty good read though. What a coincidence that someone would randomly leave a comment on one of my posts mentioning Rutgers in theirs, when I go to Rutgers myself . Thanks for sharing the letter Sheryl!