Trump discovers blogging.

Yesterday, I read "Trump launches new communications platform months after Twitter, Facebook ban The space will allow Trump to post comments, images, and videos" (Fox News).

But it's not a "new communications platform" other than in the sense that he's new to communicating in this old way, the way that I love and hold dearest. It's a blog. 

The platform, "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" appears on www.DonaldJTrump.com/desk.  

Fine. But why didn't he set up a page like this as soon as he got dumped from Twitter and Facebook? By the way, the Facebook Oversight Board is issuing its opinion on Trump this morning, so he might get back onto Facebook. [UPDATE: Trump lost.]

I can think of 2 good reasons why Trump might have delayed putting up a blog. First, he was actively arguing that Twitter and Facebook were oppressing him. If he has an easy work-around, it undercuts his argument. Second, he may have wanted to create something that really would be a new communications platform, something more like Twitter (or Parler), where millions of microbloggers could pour in and react back and forth to each other, creating waves of passionate chitchat and the seeming newsiness of trends. But it just didn't work. It was hard to design and keep running or too expensive or legally problematic. After months of experimenting, they gave up and went utterly minimal, with a blog — a blog that could have been put up the day Twitter banned him.

I see many people are mocking Trump for blogging. It's just a blog! The mockery makes sense aimed at Fox News and anyone else who calls it a "communications platform," but don't mock the blogger. The blog is sublime! I don't mean Trump's blog in particular, but The Blog, in the abstract and in my experience (which is 17 years of daily blogging). 

Will Trump's blog be sublime? We shall see. If he blogs the same way that he tweeted, it might not work. He doesn't even have comments, so where's the dynamic? His style is to attack things and on Twitter, you have more of the sense of hitting someone who's there with you, and then your followers retweet that and get something going, back and forth. It's a game to be played. By contrast, the blog just sits there, more like a book. Want to read it? Where's the sport in that? 

Trump had millions of followers on Twitter, and all they had to do was show up at Twitter and his little nibbles of quips and carps popped instantly into their heads. Do these people have the kind of heads that will go to Trump's blog and maybe copy the text and maybe the link and go back to Twitter to try to propagate the man's latest words? Or did Twitter — with Trump — ruin those heads, make them so dependent on little yummy word snacks that they can't pull it together to read a blog anymore?

Possible solution: Read books! It's retro, like Billie Eilish in a corset. No no, not like Billie Eilish in a corset. Books are not squeezing you smaller in the places convention designates as needing to be as small as possible. That's more like Twitter. Twitter and your brain.

As for blogs... well, it all depends on the blog.

(You can email me here. I don't have comments anymore. I have email! Speaking of retro.)

FROM THE EMAIL: Alex writes: 

I have to wonder if Facebook's decision, and Trump's move to a blogging platform, won't backfire on the anti-Trump establishment. Without the stream of consciousness of Twitter, Trump may be forced to slow down and replace instant, brief, commentary with something that is still relevant, but a bit longer and more nuanced. This risks making him look respectable and even *gasp* dignified and statesman-like. Well... ish. As for comments, I'd think the first step is getting into a rhythm regarding publishing his thoughts on the new platform, as well as deciding how to deal with issues such as the inevitable trolls and nutjobs. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there's a deal to integrate Gab or Parler as a means of commenting.

Celine Liu edits herself into old photographs of celebrities...

"I think people who show up on the screen are glorious.... So this series was created to fulfill my childhood wish, which was to become an icon by standing with the stars," she said. So we see her with Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. And she also puts herself on the scene with intellectuals — Albert Einstein, Frida Kahlo, and Simone de Beauvoir.



Did you think Simone de Beauvoir would shoot a gun... like that?

IN THE COMMENTS:

Example: Alex said:

Kirby Jenner, the "Fraternal Twin of Kendall Jenner" is a brilliant parody Instagram account where he pastes himself into photos of Kendall. I couldn't care less about the Kardashians but I am fascinated by the fashion and Photoshop skills on display.

Ha ha. Great! So much more fun than Celine Liu. I enjoyed them all — here — but let me pick out one.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kirby Jenner (@kirbyjenner) on Sep 27, 2017 at 10:07am PDT

AND: Well, you can probably tell I picked that one because of my longstanding "men in shorts" theme. So let me give you this one too, because it has another one of my themes:

View this post on Instagram

Every good dog owner knows that 1) dogs love to be petted 2) all dogs go to heaven and 3) the longer the tail, the smarter the dog. Well my dog Andrew has the longest tail I’ve ever seen so he must be one friggin smart af pup!! He also loves biting, running away and hiding under the couch. haha smdh freakin Andrew! Kendall’s dog is cute too tho. #Andrew #AdoptDontShop #FoundHimByArbys #DogTwins

A post shared by Kirby Jenner (@kirbyjenner) on Feb 8, 2018 at 9:16am PST

624 comments on the live-blogging thread last night.

Did the spam-bots find out I'd turned off word verification for commenting? I'll check it out. There's our liberal commenter Lindsey Meadows, who said (at 6:24 PM):

I think I'll just have casual sex tonight. After Romney, I couldn't possibly feel more violated (or bored).

When Clint Eastwood came on at 9, the liberal commenters, offset by Meade, went ageist:

elkh1 said... Clint is really really wobbly old.

Meade said... Clint looks great.

Alex said... Clint looks old and jittery. Remember folks he's 82. When he was in his 40s, it was scary.... Clint is just embarrassing right now. There is a reason for the old folks home and you're seeing it. Shoot me before I ever get like this. Senile.

2 of the long-time conservative commenters picked up the age theme:

Pogo said... Old, jittery, but vicious as hell.

Shouting Thomas said... Unfortunately, Clint is really struggling. Sad to see the great man suffering the humiliation of old age.

Pogo said... No way, ST, he's an elderly man whose body betrays him a bit, but he's hitting a million right notes. Hurrah!

What I liked about Clint's routine — which you had to trust not to feel nervous about — was when he said "We own this country... Politicians are employees of ours... When somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go." As I said in this post, this was a play on something Romney said, something that's been used against Romney: "I like being able to fire people." Clint imposed the correct interpretation on that: When somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go.

I didn't say much about Romney's speech last night, because I was way too tired by then. Our liberal friend Alex said: "ROmney talking too much about his family and church. Where are the policy initiatives? Obama is going to be speech-ifying policy like crazy next week." (Yeah, lotsa policy wonkery, that would have kept me awake.)

And our liberal Lindsey said: "I just watched Mitten with the sound on...sound on/sound off...same amount of policy specifics. Meade must be in seventh heaven." Oh, she wants policy too. If only they'd have bored us all to tears all week with specifics.

Shouting Thomas continued his lugubriousness:

Romney played small ball. I think that's what we need. He doesn't have an overriding theme, only the promise that he has the technical and managerial skills to lead.

Obama will promise social justice and payoffs to his favored groups.

The debates should be interesting.

Meade responded:

Exactly right. What we need now is boring small ball competence. Time to put obama's failed presidency behind us. Romney will be a fine president.

Lindsey with the liberal lady's focus on sex not baseball had no trouble seeing the opportunity to say:

Well by all appearances, you got a guy with small balls. I was actually hoping that all the non-policy fluff was just to woo the far right but I am now pretty locked into that being all he has. Sad really.

If a man had said something equivalently sexual about a woman, Democrats would cry "war on women." If that kind of rhetoric is okay, we ought to call out Lindsey for her "war on men."

Ah! No spam. Maybe some not-so-admirable comments in there, but nothing robotic, and so Morning on the Althouse Blog continues (i.e., no word verification for commenting). And I just want to say one thing about this supposed lack of policy specifics from the GOP and the implication of Democratic superiority on said specifics. I mean I want to quote something from Paul Ryan's speech:

[President Obama] created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. 

It was loaded with specifics.

He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.

Ryan put a long pause between "did" — the action word — and "exactly nothing."

What one Wisconsin legislator said to another after the budget vote: "You are f*cking dead."

Gordon Hintz (D) said it to Michelle Litjens (R).

(Via Alex, who notes the lack of press coverage.)