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Ljubomorna
Michelle sjela između Obame i lijepe danske premijerke
http://www.vecernji.hr/svijet/ljubomorna-michelle-sjela-izmedu-obame-i-lijepe-danske-premijerke-908650/multimedia/p1?close_url=/svijet/ljubomorna-michelle-sjela-izmedu-obame-i-lijepe-danske-premijerke-908650
Nelson Mandela: Helle Thorning-Schmidt defends David Cameron
'selfie'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/nelson-mandela/10511954/Nelson-Mandela-Helle-Thorning-Schmidt-defends-David-Cameron-selfie.html
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Neil Kinnock's daughter-in-law,
brushes off criticism of 'selfie' she took with David Cameron and Barack Obama
during Nelson Mandela memorial
David Cameron and his Danish counterpart have defended
taking part in a "selfie" with Barack Obama during Nelson Mandela's
memorial service.
The Prime Minister was pictured with President Obama and
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the daughter-in-law of Lord Kinnock, the former Labour
leader, huddled round the Dane's mobile phone.
The trio faced criticism on social media for not treating
the event with enough reverence.
But Mrs Thorning-Schmidt said the picture showed all three
leaders were "just people".
"It wasn't inappropriate," she told Danish daily
Berlingske. "There were lots of pictures taken that day, and I just
thought it was a bit fun. Maybe it also shows that when we meet heads of state
and government, we too are just people who have fun."
She added:
"There was a sadness, but it was basically a festive event that also
celebrated a man who has lived for 95 years and achieved so much in his life.
There was dancing on the stands... And then we took a really fun selfie."
"In my defence I would say that Nelson Mandela played
an extraordinary role in his life and in his death in bringing people
together," he said. "So of course when a member of the Kinnock family
asked me for a photograph, I thought it was only polite to say yes."
Michelle Obama was not unhappy during Nelson Mandela
'selfie', photographer insists
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/nelson-mandela/10510877/Michelle-Obama-was-not-unhappy-during-Nelson-Mandela-selfie-photographer-insists.html
'Selfie' diplomacy: Michelle Obama looks unamused by
Barack's joking with Danish prime minister
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/10509498/Selfie-diplomacy-Michelle-Obama-looks-unamused-by-Baracks-joking-with-Danish-prime-minister.html
First lady appears to fail to see the funny side as her
husband takes a 'selfie' with Helle Thorning-Schmidt and David Cameron
Are you a Fomo sapiens? Judging by his behaviour at Nelson
Mandela’s memorial service, Barack Obama is a member of this new sub-species.
So is our own Prime Minister, who should know better. The “Fomo” stands for
Fear of Missing Out, a defining characteristic of a generation with itchy
thumbs and short attention spans.
Fomo sapiens cannot leave its phones, tablets or laptops
alone, no matter how inappropriate the occasion. Checking your texts or
updating your Facebook status during a funeral, for instance, or taking a
happy-snap of yourself with a couple of mates during a memorial service. Those,
I hope we can still agree, are times when the focus should be on the dearly
departed, who has gone to that undiscover’d country from whose bourn no
traveller returns. Until, that is, we get the first “selfie” from the Other
Side. Lol!
Homo sapiens (wise
humans) first appeared in the fossil record in Africa
about 195,000 years ago. It seems only fitting that Fomo sapiens (self-obsessed
humans) appeared in Africa on Tuesday, in a rainy Johannesburg. The President of the United States
snuggled in close to Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, politics’
answer to Cameron Diaz, to make sure his smiling face was captured on her
phone. Meanwhile, David Cameron launched himself into the frame from the right
like a grinning dolphin at an aquapark.
Mandela memorial selfie: If President Obama acts like this,
don’t blame teenagers
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/nelson-mandela/10511140/Mandela-memorial-selfie-If-President-Obama-acts-like-this-dont-blame-teenagers.html
The shameless 'selfie' taken by Barack Obama, David Cameron
and the Danish PM at Nelson Mandela's memorial is disappointingly light-weight
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/nelson-mandela/10511140/Mandela-memorial-selfie-If-President-Obama-acts-like-this-dont-blame-teenagers.html
Was this really a fitting way to mark the passing of
Prisoner 466/64, a man who, for 18 years, was kept by South Africa’s
white-supremacist regime in an 8ft-by-7ft cell? Nelson Mandela was allowed to
send just one letter and receive one letter every six months – a deprivation
inconceivable to Fomo sapiens, who has to text, post or tweet once every six
minutes to prove that he is still alive.
Hang on, I hear you
cry, aren’t you being a bit hard on what was just a silly, casual photograph?
Perhaps – but if the leaders of the free world don’t know how to conduct
themselves on a big occasion, what hope is there for attention-deficit
teenagers soldered to their smartphones?
I’m with Michelle Obama on this one. As Barack, Helle and
Dave larked about, Michelle, who was dignity personified in black lace, gave
Barack the Wife’s Death Ray Stare, the one that says: “You may think you’re
having fun, buster, but just you wait till we get back to the room.”
Where Mandela was
always dignified, the Obama-Schmidt-Cameron trio looked crass. Where Mandela
was a highly disciplined grown-up, they looked juvenile and self-indulgent.
Back in August, Jason
Feifer, a Brooklyn-based editor, started a gallery of Selfies at Serious Places
on Tumblr. Feifer found a global parade of doe-eyed teens posing in front of Auschwitz, in cortèges and crematoria, writing gems like:
“Love my hair today. Hate why I’m dressed up #funeral.”
The very worst picture
– amid stiff competition – was of a boy gurning in front of a coffin with the
caption: “My friend took a selfie at a funeral and didn’t realise his dead
Grandma was in the background!”
Yesterday, Feifer
announced that he was giving up Selfies at Serious Places. Now that the
President had appeared in a funeral selfie, “my work is done,” he said.
However, Feifer refused to condemn the cretins who take funeral selfies,
claiming that youngsters in previous generations would have done exactly the same
if they had had smartphones. “When a teen tweets out a funeral selfie, their
friends understand that [they] are expressing an emotion they may not have
words for. It’s a visual language that older people simply don’t speak,” said
Feifer.
I don’t agree. The
funeral selfie is not an expression of emotion; it’s an evasion of emotion.
Twenty-five years ago, when my grandfather was buried, I stood by the side of
his freshly dug grave and I was drenched in sorrow. The soft thump of the earth
my grandmother dropped on his coffin, the crack of the gravedigger’s spade, the
tears coursing down my face, the women keening all around me. This was death,
that hard and serious thing: the dark backing to the mirror, as Saul Bellow
beautifully called it. There was no chance to distract myself from grief; no
beeping phone, no time to compose 140 characters, leaving room for a clever
hashtag. No selfie to prove where I was or what I felt. Who needs a photograph
when life itself has never been more vivid, or more devastating?
A study published
this week claims that when we take a photo of something, we are less likely to
remember it. “When people rely on technology to remember for them — counting on
the camera to record the event and thus not needing to attend to it fully themselves
— it can have a negative impact on how well they remember their experiences,”
says psychologist Dr Linda Henkel.
What implications
does this “photo-taking impairment effect” have for Fomo sapiens, who
photographs everything that moves without being moved, who texts fast but has
no time to think?
The great Cuban
dancer, Carlos Acosta, told the Telegraph yesterday that he believes there is a
shortage of talent to succeed him because “with phones, computer games and
DVDs”, the younger generation of dancers is “always distracted, always
entertained”. Ballet, he said, by contrast, was “very, very hard”.
Nelson Mandela knew
the meaning of very, very hard. In one of his final interviews, Mandela said
that, despite the hardship, his long years in prison had given him time to
really think and expand his moral outlook on the world. He became the free
spirit, ready to act when the moment came, and those who jailed him were the
captives of their own prejudice. Homo sapiens have seldom been wiser, or half as
good.
That is why Obama’s
Fomo sapiens moment on Tuesday was so disappointing. More than any other world
leader, he has tried to follow Mandela’s example: be patient, take time to
reflect, be slow to wrath. Why blow it, on that of all days, for the sake of a
moment’s distraction?
In his speech at
Mandela’s memorial service, Obama said: “Let us search for his largeness of
spirit somewhere inside of ourselves.” Harken to your own words, Mr President:
“Inside our selves.” Not in our selfies.
Barack Obama selfie: All hail the Danish prime minister
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10511319/Barack-Obama-selfie-All-hail-the-Danish-prime-minister.html
Barack Obama 'selfie': who is Helle Thorning-Schmidt?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/nelson-mandela/10510889/Barack-Obama-selfie-who-is-Helle-Thorning-Schmidt.html
Danish prime minister becomes internet sensation after
taking “selfie” photograph with Barack Obama and David Cameron at the Nelson
Mandela memorial