The Original Palm Pilot.

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: Off the Map - Usage of teleprompter by President Barack Obama

A few words of advice for all you anti-Obama conservatives out there. Quit it with the whole teleprompter fixation, would ya? OK, OK, we get it, you don't like the President. And you'll catapult the complete catalogue, including the kitchen sink, to attack him and his Administration on everything under the sun: from being responsible for the recent rash of substandard Vermont maple syrup crops and the irksome infestation of grunge rock into country-western music all the way to wormy pears. Anything he stands for is bad, and all that he's against is good. Noted and entered.

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But in order to avoid major mortification, you've got to stop with the "overly dependent on the teleprompter" charge. Please. Really. You need a new argument. And trust me, there's a veritable plethora of opportunities for contemptuousness available. Why not make fun of the way he cocks his head and looks Messianically upward like he's trying to catch the whisper of God on an errant zephyr? Or you could profess incredulity at the global-cooling shade provided by his preternaturally immense ears or regularly remark on how he's such a conciliator he probably clogs up Safeway's express lanes for hours while dithering over the worrying dilemma of "paper or plastic."

I'm serious here, and only trying to help. You guys look like total idiots. For one thing, everybody uses a teleprompter. I'm talking CEOs, news anchors, dogcatchers, dog-throwers, late night talk show hosts, Judge Judy, and every politician on the face of the planet, including David Duke and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When Glenn Beck spits contempt at the President's overreliance on a teleprompter, he's reading his criticism ... off a teleprompter.

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A teleprompter is a tool. Think of it as rolling notes. It's the words, the words, that are important. You might as well castigate cooks for their wearisome dependence on pots. Ski poles are nothing but snow crutches and anyone who used them at the Olympics should have been...