Franken, Bachmann, Walz and Ellison "Bobble Reps"

Asked at Saturday’s Netroots Minnesota conference what blogs he follows, Rep. Tim Walz pulled out his iPhone and rattled off a few sites: Talking Points Memo, Bluestem Prairie, MN Publius and others. Then he showed off his favorite iPhone app — a new one that features his likeness and that of every other member of the House and Senate as shakeable cartoon bobbleheads.

The 99-cent “Bobble Rep” app helps users find out who represents them in Congress, either through a direct search or by using the iPhone’s GPS locator. The caricatures — heads for each of 540 legislators put on one of 12 bodies — were drawn by MAD Magazine artist Tom Richmond to be fun and nonpartisan. But Apple didn’t see it that way: it rejected the application claiming “it ridicules public figures.”

Richmond wrote:

This is truly ridiculous. These caricatures aren’t mean or very exaggerated. They are simple, fun cartoon likenesses of the politicians and the purpose of the app is an informational database. There is no editorial commentary involved at all.

Indeed, related projects, while likewise tame, could probably be construed as far more “offensive,” to use Apple’s word. Sen. Franken, for instance, was rendered as a 3D vampire bobblehead, “The Count,” (along with Norm Coleman) by the St. Paul Saints baseball team in March. And earlier this month, Franken and Coleman were given the MAD Magazine treatment in a spoof ad for “Democra-cialis, ” a cure for the kind of “electile dysfunction” that plagued their 2008 Senate battle, in MAD’s list of “dumbest people, events and things” of 2009.

But last Monday, Apple reversed its decision, green-lighting the app that made its way to Walz’s cellphone.

Walz’s wielded smartphone could’ve been a good prop for another question he answered — about net neutrality. He said he’s “absolutely convinced that we must keep net neutrality,” and thanks to his resolve, “AT&T doesn’t even come to my office anymore” to lobby against it, he added. He said he’s surprised that conservatives aren’t more concerned about the freedom issues surrounding the possibility of corporations controlling what internet users can and can’t access.

“If you want to wave the patriot banner,” he said, “wave it on net neutrality.”

Here’s how each of Minnesota’s Bobble Reps look:

The letter to acting FCC chair Michael Copps — signed by Klobuchar and Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) — doesn’t name iPhone, but the language makes it clear that the phone’s exclusive contract with AT&T is a concern: It asks Copps and the FCC to “examine this issue carefully and act expeditiously should you find that exclusivity agreements unfairly restrict consumer choice or adversely impact competition in the commercial wireless marketplace.”

At the committee’s hearing yesterday, Paul Roth, an AT&T president, defended the exclusive deals like the one they have with Apple.

Exclusive handset distribution arrangements encourage the necessary collaboration that optimizes handset performance and accelerates the delivery of next-generation features. They increase a carrier’s incentives to make purchase commitments and to invest in promotions, network improvements and special training of sales staff. They lower manufacturer entry barriers and serve as a key tool to maintain brand value. And, as an important form of competition, they encourage other carriers and manufacturers to do better, by improving their own handset portfolios or the prices, features and other characteristics of their existing offerings.

BoingBoing’s Joel Johnson says it’s an issue of consumer choice: Cellphone customers should have the option of using the phone they choose with the provider they prefer — say running an iPhone on T-Mobile or Sprint. But he wonders about the technical aspects.

“It’s certainly fair to consumers to have the most choice, especially when carriers have created a false economy to force customers into long-term contracts through the sale of ‘subsidized’ phones,” he writes. “But it might be sticky for the manufacturers of the phones — would Apple, for instance, be forced to make different models of iPhone that worked with other wireless standards like Verizon’s CDMA?”