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Green Bay Packers head coach Mike Sherman canceled a press conference after a cameraman's cell phone rang while he was talking.

I suspect it’s related to why dogs pee on trees and utility poles. People who set their phones to maximum ringing volume and terminally annoying ring tones are marking out their territory, announcing their presence and importance: “Look at me. I’m important.”

I just wish others would do what Sherman did. I’d love to see a minister cancel the rest of a service when a phone rings. Or a symphony orchestra pack their instruments and leave at the first sound of a ring.

The Packers asked the miscreant to identify himself — or herself. The penalty for admission of guilt was loss of access to the Packers for a week. The penalty for not admitting guilt was cancellation of Brett Favre’s Thursday press conference.

Faced with personal inconvenience or the inconvenience of dozens of others who were innocent, the guilty person chose to let everyone suffer, adding cowardice to his list of sins.

I hope he — or she — is wallowing in misery and guilt, though I doubt it. People who think they’re more important than everyone else, people who don’t think the rules apply to them, never seem to suffer from their own boorishness.

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At Shinnecock Hills, among other places, members can use cell phones in the parking lot and no where else on the premises.

At an exceptionally exclusive club in the Washington, D.C. area, cell phones are not allowed anywhere but in the parking lot. Members have to leave them in their cars, and those who don’t had better not be caught using one or they’ll be evicted for the day and possibly have their membership revoked. A person who belongs to the club, which is all-male and does not allow females to even play the course, remarked that it may be the only golf course in America where you can urinate in the fairway but you have to go behind a tree to use a cell phone.

I like that idea.

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