It was really only a matter of time before a selfie sparked a political ‘scandal’ dumber than the usual sex scandal, and that finally happened thanks to David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox and President Obama. Here’s your guide to Selfieghazi, such as it is.
To recap, the timeline of events was this:
- Samsung hired David Ortiz to be their “MLB social media insider” and gave him a Samsung Note 3
- Ortiz went to the White House the next day, and took a selfie with Obama.
- Samsung retweeted it.
- Things got stupid.
Essentially, Samsung and Ortiz stand accused of attempting to use Obama for a marketing campaign without the President’s or the White House’s knowledge or consent. Ortiz and Samsung have made the extremely reasonable argument that there was no way Ortiz could anticipate the President would agree to a selfie and that engineering an attempt to get one is kind of stupid for precisely the reasons enumerated above.
Either way, though, the fallout boils down to this, according to Yahoo!: No more Obama selfies.
“Well, [President Obama] obviously didn’t know anything about Samsung’s connection to this,” [senior advisor Dan] Pfeiffer said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “And perhaps maybe this will be the end of all selfies.”
Yes, a White House official had to go on national TV to discuss a selfie as if it were Mideast policy or something actually important, as opposed to just a photo that was going to be retweeted by every Sawx zombie on the planet in the first place.
Lost in all this is the idea that somehow, this helped Samsung move phones. Social media is powerful, but that’s kind of ridiculous. Either way, if you’re at some political event and want to take a selfie with Obama, and get rejected… blame Samsung.
UPDATE: Selfies are safe at the White House… for now.