Yesterday, Green Bay Packers coach Mike Sherman huffed off after a cameraman's cell phone went off during a press conference:

Like moviegoers everywhere, the Green Bay Packers are fed up with interruptions caused by those annoying cell phones going off at the most inopportune time.

So, coach Mike Sherman cut short his weekly news conference Wednesday when a camera operator's phone rang, and the team canceled quarterback Brett Favre's weekly briefing when the culprit failed to 'fess up.

The cell phone went off about 16 minutes into what is normally about a 25-minute news conference when Sherman was in the middle of answering a question about his defense.

"I don't understand that," Sherman, a former high school history teacher, said as he walked away from the podium in the media auditorium. "That stuff to me, to be honest with you, is a total lack of respect for each other. Forget me, you don't have to respect me. But respect each other."

While Sherman was probably more pissed off about being the coach of a 1-6 team than he was about a cell phone, his reaction is understandable. Cell phones are convenient, and yet also horrible. On the plus side, people can reach you no matter where you are. On the minus side, people can reach you no matter where you are. And, Sherman's damn right about how so much of cell phone use shows a complete lack of respect for the people around you. And I'm not just talking about strangers who have to listen to one side of your conversation. I've been with people, who, in the middle of conversation, will answer their cell phone and proceed to gab away, while I'm just left sitting there twiddling my thumbs.

I was at a concert last week and I saw an entirely different phenomenon: people who were more excited to get on their cell phones and call their friends while the concert was happening than they were to actually watch and listen to the concert themselves. My thought is that cell phones have made us so preoccupied with what is going on away from us that we're not paying enough attention and care to what we're actually doing. The grass is always greener on the other end of the line.

So, I ask, are cell phones a tool of the devil? If so, perhaps the rest of us could take a cue from Mike Sherman and demand that real, live human beings take precedence over these bright, shiny, seductive minions of Satan.