"Mitt Romney’s son rescued four people from a car crash—then tweeted a photo of himself grinning next to the wreck."

"Bad move if you’re an aspiring politician from a family with a reputation for being out of touch."

“Was first on scene to big accident, see pic of car in the house,” Josh tweeted. “I lifted 4 people out to safety. All ok. Thankful.” Accompanying the tweet was a the moral equivalent of a selfie of Josh standing proudly in front of the wrecked SUV that had just destroyed some homeowner’s kitchen.

Weirdly, he is grinning—the symptom of either a relentlessly sunny personality or else an alarming incapacity to empathize with another person’s horrible luck.

Poor Josh Romney. Even when he's out there saving lives, he must be ever on guard lest he create evidence that can be used to say, one more time, Romney is out of touch.

By the way, Barack Obama is always smiling — including while standing in front of wrecks worse than a car that crashed into a kitchen but didn't injure anyone. Somehow his smile always fits the preferred media framing: Whatever happens, we still love him as a person.

IN THE COMMENTS: MadisonMan said:

How is that a selfie? Is his right arm 25 feet long with multiple joints?

CWJ said:

[M]y take was that either Josh reflexively smiled when the camera was pointed at him, or that the amateur photographer might actually have said "cheese" or its equivalent.

I said:

Yeah... I can imagine a lot of jokes that could be made, like "Hey, where's Seamus?!!!"

More seriously, Paddy O said:

I think of news people who always need to be on the scene of a disaster. That's much worse, I think.

For people who grow up in social media, this is a way of sharing what happened, a traumatic event that ended better than it might have. Maybe the smile was out of place, but it's very human.

If a person didn't start by hating the Romneys, this wouldn't even be an issue.

And I said:

Property damage is worth laughing at when you know the people are all safe. If you've ever been in a situation like that, you know we're all safe is everything. Then you look at the wreck and you can laugh.

The people who don't understand that kind of laughing should reflect and then give thanks if what I suspect is true: They never lost a loved one in a car crash.

ADDED: On the "selfie" issue. The article at The Daily Beast does say "the moral equivalent of a selfie," as I've quoted, and the headline at the link is "Josh Romney’s Awkward Car-Crash 'Selfie,'" with "selfie" in quotes. You might argue that "selfie" is in quotes because it's slang, but The Beast can say it's in quotes because it's not actually a selfie, but it's the moral equivalent of a selfie. And the failure to put "selfie" in quotes in the phrase "moral equivalent of a selfie" squarely refutes the quotes-because-it's-slang interpretation.