For media executive Sue Douglas, reviewing the papers for the BBC News Channel, it's "fiddling while Rome burns".
The next panhandler came up to me while I was fiddling with my cellphone.
It really is fiddling while the world burns," said Kerry Emanuel, a leading climate scientist.
"All these things are fine and good but it's fiddling on the margins," said Susy Struble, who leads the alumni activist group Dartmouth Change.
Aside from using cell phones, a distraction counts as anything that takes your full attention off the road, whether it's fiddling with the radio, checking or applying make-up, or eating food.
They don't quite catch today, held back by a set that is a little too heavy on their weaker, recent material and an eddying wind that makes it sound like someone is fiddling with a giant fader switch.
Yet now that Germany is fiddling its own figures, it will be harder to exclude Italy.
He turns to Trump, who has pulled his phone out of his pocket and is fiddling with it.
