A former Iowa Democratic Party communications director who worked on both of President Barack Obama's White House campaigns apologized publicly Sunday for posting a selfie taken at the site of a fatal East Village inferno in New York City.
"It was inconsiderate to those hurt in the crash and to the city of New York," the former staffer, Christina Freundlich, said in an email to
The Des Moines Register. "What happened last week in the East Village is not to be taken lightly, and I regret my course of action."
Freundlich, who left the party post last month, was one of several people exposed by
The New York Post, which on Sunday's front page carried a picture of seven women taking a picture of themselves in front of the wreckage with a "selfie stick" and called them "Village Idiots."
The Post described Freundlich and others who took cheery photos of themselves at the blast site as "self-absorbed jerks" who were treating the death scene "like a tourist attraction" by shooting selfies even while rescuers were searching for
two bodies that were later pulled from the rubble.
Overall, the explosion, fire, and building collapses injured 25 people, and the selfie displays outraged people in the East Village neighborhood and people online.
"This is a tragedy, not a tourist attraction," said a sign one of the destroyed buildings' neighbors taped to a door, reports The Post.
But one of the women, Jeanie Slade, who posted a grinning selfie with a friend at the site, along with a hashtag "#being tourists," said on Saturday that she took the picture as "satire ... to point out how many people post selfies in inappropriate times."
After receiving backlash, she deleted both her Twitter and Instagram accounts, but refused to back down from her satire claim.
"I'm so sorry for any miscommunication, and my satire was in poor taste," she told The Post.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.