In a video actually titled “We’re Really Puzzled,” Newt Gingrich calls upon his fellow Americans to come up with a better word for “what you probably think is a cell phone.” Frequently holding up a device that is either an iPhone or some kind of Android for emphasis, Gingrich insists, “If it’s taking pictures, it’s not a cell phone.” What else makes something not a cell phone? “If it has a McDonald’s app to tell you where McDonald’s is based on your GPS location, that’s not a cell phone. If you can get Wikipedia or go to Google, that’s not a cell phone. If you can watch YouTube, that’s not a cell phone.” According to the former presidential candidate, something is also not a cell phone if you can use it to access Netflix, which just happens to be the best place to binge-watch Downton Abbey.
He goes on to say that he has been referring to his own cell phone as “a handheld computer,” but he doesn’t think that’s quite right, because the object’s “real power isn’t internal computation. Its real power is networking.” Gingrich, who apparently has never heard the word “smartphone,” feels that we to adopt a new term describe cell phones so “we could explain to people that they carry in their hand literally the potential to have a dramatic revolution in how we get things done, in how we take care of our own health, in how we interact with our government, and in how we are productive” — and also in how we can listen to snippets of ABBA dozens of times a day.
