Sunday, December 15, 2013

Only Obama's olinguito...


The story behind this famous selfie is HERE
Last month the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013 was declared as "selfie". The word has become more popular with the ubiquitousness of smartphones but has in fact been around for over a decade (yes, before Facebook, YouTube and Twitter existed). Barely a month later the site Selfies at funerals closes up shop because Obama just put the cherry on the icing on the cake. The main reasons why the picture of Obama's selfie stands out are many as a great article in the New York Post makes clear and few that pay any attention at all can doubt Obama's narcissitic tendancy: "Days before the funeral selfie, the White House tweeted out a Pearl Harbor remembrance that consisted of a photo of Obama laying a wreath. Six days before that he honored Rosa Parks by tweeting out a picture of himself sitting on the bus she desegregated. Nine days before that he honored the anniversary of JFK’s death with a tweet of himself looking at the fallen president’s White House portrait." [Link NYP]. Santiago Lyon, vice president and director of photography at The Associated Press has another word for it: "Until the White House revisits its draconian restrictions on photojournalists’ access to the president, information-savvy citizens, too, would be wise to treat those handout photos for what they are: propaganda." [Link, NYT].

For those interested the Word of the Year shortlist (see first link above) was as follows: bedroom tax (the BBC's favourite); binge-watch, bitcoin, olinguito (Ows' favourite), schmeat (WTF?), showrooming and twerk (any perv's favourite).

2 comments:

Paul said...

There's no such thing as bad publicity!

Span Ows said...

ha, I would bet that there is...but it's a good old saying :-)