Buried amidst the mandatory Sarah Palin-bashing editorials and op/ed columns (note to editors of said fishwrap: in the words of Bob Dylan, don’t criticize what you can’t understand) and such in today’s New York Times is this little item:

Before he ran for president Barack Obama quit smoking.  Now that he’s won the job, he may have to break another addiction: Checking his BlackBerry for e-mail.

The president’s e-mail can be subpoenaed by Congress and courts and may be subject to public records laws, so if a president doesn’t want his e-mail public, he shouldn’t e-mail, experts said.  And there may be security issues about carrying around trackable cell phones.

Now, although I have gone on record more than a few times as being one who is (ahem) somewhat (ahem) less than enthused with the President-elect, in this case I have nothing but sympathy for the man.  Denied e-mail?  Forbidden to always be in touch with the Internet and the world?  Talk about a fate worse than death.

I’m sure there was a time in my life, memories of which are now mostly blotted out through extensive electro-shock therapy and a 24 hour IV of industrial strength sedatives lest I recall said days of yore thus bringing about unceasing waves of unspeakable agony, when to be out and about meant being away from everyone and everything.  These are now referred to as the Dark Ages, coinciding with when I walked twenty miles to school and back barefoot in the snow and uphill — both ways — returning home to find nothing but cold gravel to eat for breakfast and thirty-seven hour days working in the salt mine while being routinely beaten with a burning railroad tie.  And I was grateful for having it that good.

Today?  Ah, today I hold in my hands the eighth wonder of the world, a pearl of greatest value.  No, not the BlackBerry Pearl, silly.  Nay, ’tis the iPhone of which I speak.  E-mail!  Text!  Web!  Music!  I hear you can also make phone calls on it, something I’ll have to try one of these days.  To be separated from these things… give me AT&T or give me death!  (Which in an alarmingly large number of coverage areas is one and the same.  But I digress.)

So yes, I completely empathize with Obama on this one…

… or at least did until I saw this part of the story:

Actress Scarlett Johansson said she has had frequent e-mail exchanges with him (Obama) during his campaign travels

So much for that sympathy.