Republican Congressmen summoned Google CEO Sundar Pichai to Capitol Hill Tuesday to explain why Google "censors" conservatives, why Trump is an idiot, and incidentally, what their privacy practices are.
When it came to Rep. Steve King, he was actually more concerned with something else.
“I have a seven-year-old granddaughter who picked up her phone during the election, and she’s playing a little game, the kind of game a kid would play,” King told Pichai. “And up on there pops a picture of her grandfather. And I’m not going to say into the record what kind of language was used around that picture of her grandfather, but I’d ask you: how does that show up on a seven-year-old’s iPhone, who’s playing a kid’s game?”
Pichai, a bit nonplussed, replied, "Congressman, the iPhone is made by a different company."
For King, apparently, iPhones and Androids are interchangeable, because he (somewhat sullenly) allowed that it might have been an Android, that it was a hand-me-down.
Now we can have a talk about anyone giving a seven-year old kid a smartphone as hand-me-down, but it should especially be incumbent on parents to pay attention to what their kids can access that way. We can do that, but I'd rather speculate about what could have popped up on his granddaughter's phone.
Given his racism, his sexism, his loathsome and rude comments about anyone who is not a white supremacist like he is, it's not hard to imagine her asking her grampy what a white supremacist is, for example.
Got ideas? Leave them in the comments.
