It's getting hard to find cameraless mobile phones.

Amidst the aseptically-perfumed bare functionality, typifying a hospital ward, a pretty and petite elfin teenage girl stirs – tawny hair all tousled and bed-headed, lips full yet petulant.

Everyone from President Bush to Ann Coulter was using it to denote wimplike, Volvo-driving softies too spineless for dangerous times and too given to speaking French.

We didn't expect this, Kantamala said later of the exchange, so I took this opportunity to say what I think. Said Press Secretary Mary Hoyt later, Mrs. Carter would appreciate that kind of forthrightness. It takes it out of purely coffee talk and makes it something meaningful.