iPhone iPhume

On Friday, June 29, when I turned on the 5:30 news on a local TV channel, the coverage was all about the iPhone…or rather about people standing/sitting in line all day to be one of the first to buy one. 

One news reporter interviewed several hopefuls in line outside of the AT&T outlet at Tatum and Shea.  Most had been there since early morning “braving” the 106-degree temperatures.  When asked why he was doing this, one young man said, “I just have to have one.”

The reporter, “warming up” to the subject as he strolled down the line of shorts-clad people standing or sitting in portable canvas beach chairs, asked a 30-something woman how she was holding up.

“It’s hard,” she said, “but with (bottled) water and going into the shade every so often, I am managing it.”

At 6:50 p.m., the iPhone buyers were still the big news of the day.  Another TV channel showed a man exiting the store with his new iPhone in hand, exclaiming “I’m overwhelmed with joy!”

Why did this whole “news” coverage incense me so?  (Indeed I didn’t blog about it last week, cuz I really didn’t want to rant.)

Maybe it was because that same Friday, my day off, I had read about the number of children worldwide who die before reaching the age of 5 from malnutrition and disease, much of it due to the lack of potable water. Or maybe because the U.S. Congress doesn’t seem moved to action to provide health coverage for all children of the working poor in our own country.   Maybe because I have lived in places were young women stand in line for hours or walk miles under the hot sun every day for something they really have to have– water. 

If a news reporter would ask them how they were holding up, would any of them answer,  “It’s hard….but I am managing it.”

I wonder, because despite their waiting and walking and carrying, many of their young children still die–without ever having been overwhelmed with joy, much less over an iPhone.