Conservative Talking Points, On Your iPhone

By Chris Good
Say you're discussing the merits of health care policy with a conservative friend, and he pulls out his iPhone and starts thumbing around on it. He's not even paying attention to me, you think, when he looks up, eyes blazing, and fires off some fresh conservative rhetoric.

Your friend has probably purchased the Conservative Talking Points iPhone app, approved by Apple for sale and now available for $1.99 at the app store. It provides users with 250 talking points on everything from "America - The Greatest Nation Ever" to "Out of Control Spending" to ACORN to "Private Industries Taken Over (See Fascism in America)."

"Be armed with the Conservative Talking Points (CTP) iPhone App as your powerful arsenal to debate those emotional and ill-prepared liberals," it advertises in the pre-purchase info provided at the app store. It should make a nice pairing with the Glenn Beck Station Locator app, for anyone who needs to find Glenn Beck on the radio with haste.
John Deans, a conservative activist and computer consultant from Brenham, Texas, wrote the content (but not the code, which he hired out). Deans has never written talking points professionally--his resume does not include "political strategist"--but he says he's been active in the Texas GOP for years.

The kicker: in September Apple actually rejected iSinglePayer, a liberal iPhone app providing stats on single-payer health care, allegedly because the application was "politically charged." Apple has since approved iSinglePayer, which is now available for free.
Conservative Talking Points - iPhone AppSee web-only content:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/10/conservative-talking-points-on-your-iphone/28096/
But Deans seems to take particular glee in any conservative favoritism Apple may have revealed: a press release announcing the CTP app today rejoices, "The Conservative Talking Points (CTP) App is not only politically charged, but is a direct attack on liberalism and the current trend towards socialism in America. The author of CTP was pleasantly surprised when Apple iTunes approved their polarizing App in just eight days. Websites like The Daily KOS were enraged that a conservative App was published on the App Store but the liberal one was rejected."

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/10/conservative-talking-points-on-your-iphone/28096/