In Defense Of Selfies: Rembrandt


Millennials get a lot of heat for the whole “selfie” thing. But what is a selfie? Most of the time the term refers to people taking photos of themselves—arms outstretched—with their phones. But the phone part really isn’t important. I think most good people can agree that a selfie is any picture you take of yourself. But what if you put a camera on a tripod and use a timer? is that a selfie? I would venture, yes. What if we dispense with the camera entirely and talk straight self-portraits?

The truth is the selfie has a noble heritage in high art. Take Rembrandt for instance, who was born July 15, 1606. One of the greatest artists of all time, Rembrandt completed more than 60 self-portraits. (You can check out many of them and more of Rembrandt’s works here.)

So anyway, the next time some stick in the mud tells you that selfies are what’s wrong with America just be all, “What about Rembrandt, man? What about Rembrandt?” Then float away up into the clouds.

Have a nice day.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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