David Ortiz may have caused the end of White House selfies

If you happen to bump into President Obama at the White House and aren’t allowed to take a selfie to record the occasion, you can thank David Ortiz.

It started with a seemingly spontaneous moment during the Boston Red Sox’s visit to the White House last week, when Ortiz snapped a photo of himself and the president with his Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

The reigning World Series MVP posted the photo on Twitter and it has been retweeted more than 42,500 times. One of those retweets came from Samsung, which has more than 5.2 followers and also just happens to have an endorsement deal with Ortiz.

Samsung told the Boston Globe it was “thrilled to see the special, historic moment David Ortiz captured with his Galaxy Note 3” and has admitted that company officials had “worked with David and the team on how to share images with fans.”

Although Ortiz has said the selfie wasn’t a promotional gimmick at all, none of this is sitting well with the White House, senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday on CBS’ “Meet the Press.”

“In general, whenever someone tries to use the president’s likeness to promote a product, that’s a problem,” said Pfeiffer, who indicated that lawyers were dealing with the matter.

He added that Obama “obviously didn’t know anything about Samsung’s connection to this” and that “maybe this will be the end of all selfies.”

Presumably he meant the end of all spontaneous selfies with the president at the White House. Although wouldn’t it be great if he meant all selfies in general? Or even just the use of the suddenly ubiquitous word “selfie?”

If that’s the case, we really should thank Ortiz.