Hillary laments ‘tyranny of the selfie’
Hillary Clinton takes one constant selfie with supporters as she walks to her table in Nevada. pic.twitter.com/7d8N7SLcM4
— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) January 7, 2016
James Madison famously warned against the tyranny of the majority in “The Federalist Papers,” but Hillary Clinton says a new villain poses a grave threat to the republic: “The tyranny of the selfie.”
{mosads}In an interview in the February edition of Esquire, Clinton says the rise of the solipsistic snapshot has made it harder to connect with voters.
“It used to be — and I was talking to President Obama about this the other day — it used to be that you would do an event like this and then you would shake hands with people and they would talk to you,” Clinton said in the interview.
“They would say, ‘I liked what you said about this’ or ‘You didn’t mention that’ or ‘Can I tell you this?’ And it was a constant learning and absorbing experience,” she added.
“Now, it’s just ‘Can I take a selfie?’ ”
Despite her reservations about the selfie, the Democratic presidential front-runner said she tries to be accommodating to photo requests.
“That’s what people ask for,” she said. “If I’m going to try to get to everybody, I have to be good at it.”
Hillary Clinton takes one constant selfie with supporters as she walks to her table in Nevada. pic.twitter.com/7d8N7SLcM4
— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) January 7, 2016
Clinton is not the only candidate to complain about selfie requests.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush quipped that the right to take a selfie is like “the 11th Amendment of the Bill of Rights.”
“I don’t know, look, it wasn’t that long ago that people wanted signatures on things, and now, forget that, ‘I want my damn selfie. I’m not leaving until I get it.’ So we spend a lot of quality time doing that,” he said.
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