Trump.45 has surely changed some of the mores of American politics. Whether those changes will be permanent or simply considered aberrations over time has yet to be determined.
One change is the lightening pace of his twistings, twirlings, flippings, floppings, and changelings on people, places, and things, galore and unlimited.
One cannot digest a full meal of Trump.45’s verbal assaults in any reasonable mealtime interval. The best one can hope for is to snatch some of his essence in morsels. These morsels are analytical and ethereal, heavily caloric and grease laden politically, yet curiously insubstantial in actual nutritive effect.
Like their culinary counterparts, we use the term to describe a bite size amount, either sweet or savory.
From Dictionary.com: Morsel
As a noun:
- a bite, mouthful, or small portion of food, candy, etc.
- a small piece, quantity, or amount of anything; scrap; bit.
- something very appetizing; treat or tidbit.
- a person or thing that is attractive or delightful.
As a verb (used with object):
- to distribute in or divide into tiny portions (often followed by out):
- to morsel out the last pieces of meat.
From Merriam-Webster online:
- a small piece of food : bite
- a small quantity : fragment
- a tasty dish
- something delectable and pleasing
- a negligible person
Morsel is a curiously powerful modern English word that can be used as either a noun or a verb (with an object); it has many synonyms; and a plain Google search reveals more than 4.6 million hits.
From Merriam-Webster Thesaurus and Google Dictionary here is a partial list of synonyms for morsel (noun):
bite, mouthful, nibble, nugget, taste, tidbit, soupçon, spoonful, forkful, sliver, drop, dollop, spot, gobbet, tidbit, atom, crumb, dribble, fleck, flyspeck, grain, granule, molecule, bit, mote, nubbin, nugget, particle, patch, scrap, scruple, snip, snippet, speck, tittle cipher, dwarf, half-pint, insect, insignificancy, lightweight, nobody, nonentity, nothing, nullity, number, pip-squeak, pygmy (also pigmy), shrimp, snippersnapper, twerp, whippersnapper, zero, zilch
Merriam-Webster describes its etymology of the word morsel, tracing its origin from Latin to early French, and then Middle English (14th Century).
Etymology: Middle English morsel “a small piece of food,” from early French morsel (same meaning), from mors “a bite,” derived from Latin morsus, past participle of mordemacronre “to bite”.
As an aside, this might be viewed as an example of a linguistic Tinkers to Evans to Chance setup: Italy to France to England. For baseball lovers (loosely marking Italy as Shortstop, France as Second Base, and England as First Base for a word sleuth batter standing as Home Plate somewhere more eastward in Europe), this is a sure fire ground ball double play out as so often proven in the flesh by the potent Chicago Cubs baseball team in 1907 and 1908, when they repeated as World Series Champions back to back.
Many common modern English words starting with the letter “M” date from 14th Century Middle English, such as:
A brief meditation on just the synonyms of morsel and some other 14th century “M” words provokes an interesting potential schematic for a partial Trump mind map (he of only the very best words, don’t you know): his verbal clumsiness, his promiscuity, his paranoia, his over fascination with money, his Muslim antipathy, his dismissal of science, his profligate spending, his size obsession, his mocking of others with rude nicknames, his uncalled for meanness, his petty thirst for revenge, his persistent bullying, his win at all costs attitude, his disregard for the plain truth, his verbal dissembling, and so on.
A morsel can be both an appetizing treat or a cutting personal insult. Just like Trump.45 in real life.
As a matter of interest, here is a graphic representation of the popular use of morsel since 1800. Its use declined fro most of the last 200 years, but it seems seems to have regained some strength since about 2000.
Trump Morsel (TM) ™ #1: Body Parts & Twitter *
Nearly everyone in America is aware by now of the overwhelming, narcissistic obsession Trump.45 exhibits with respect to body parts: his own and those of others (both sexes). We are talking height, hair, brain size, finger length, male equipment, female sexual attributes, weight, etc., ad nauseum.
In his own legendary mind, Trump.45 usually finishes on top, or at least in only the very topmost exclusive ranking. Number #2 is simply not an option.
His pathological passion for winning comparison extends easily to other attributes such as money. fame, popularity, power, etc., etc.
Naturally enough, since it is Trump.45 we are speaking about, in actual fact, in none of these physical body parts or personal attribute categories does he rank first in the U.S., much less the rest of the World as we know it. Oh, well.
Nonetheless, like the Little Engine Who Must, he keeps trying, and one day perhaps, he might make it to Number One in positive Some Category or Other, though obviously not in any physical sense, since he is already seventy years old, and that superlative ship of physicality already sailed some time ago.
Which leaves only attribute categories for him to conquer. Hence, the relevance of Twitter and Twitter comparisons.
Trump.45, as anyone with a modern cellphone or computer well knows, is a Twitting fanatic. There may be many reasons for this, among them the often Wild West lack of enforceable standards found in the Twitter Universe (ethics, truthfulness, accuracy, editorial content), the low character limit (until recently 140 characters with few exceptions), and the free cost of repetitively drenching the electronic universe (no advertising fees or access charges for simple tweets).
For those who aren’t Twitter devotes or enmeshed in its clutches:
Twitter is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, called “tweets.” These messages were originally restricted to 140 characters, but on November 7, 2017, the limit was doubled to 280 characters for all languages except Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Registered users can post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them. Users access Twitter through its website interface, Short Message Service (SMS) or mobile device application software (“app”). Twitter, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California, United States, and has more than 25 offices around the world.
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams and launched in July of that year. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity. In 2012, more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day. In 2013, it was one of the ten most-visited websites and has been described as “the SMS of the Internet”. As of 2016, Twitter had more than 319 million monthly active users. On the day of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Twitter proved to be the largest source of breaking news, with 40 million election-related tweets sent by 10 p.m. (Eastern Time) that day.
According to research published in April 2014, around 44 percent of user accounts have never tweeted.
The first tweet was posted by Jack Dorsey (creator) at 12:50 PM PST on March 21, 2006 and read “just setting up my twittr”.
On October 21, 2009, the first tweet was sent from space. US astronauts Nicola Stott and Jeff Williams took part in a live ‘tweetup’ from the International Space Station with around 35 members of the public at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA.
Content of tweets according to Pear Analytics
- News (3.6%)
- Spam (3.8%)
- Self-promotion (5.9%)
- Pointless babble (40.1%)
- Conversational (37.6%)
- Pass-along value (8.7%)
San Antonio-based market-research firm Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the United States and in English) over a two-week period in August 2009 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm (CST) and separated them into six categories
Despite Jack Dorsey’s own open contention that a message on Twitter is “a short burst of inconsequential information”, social networking researcher Danah Boyd responded to the Pear Analytics survey by arguing that what the Pear researchers labelled “pointless babble” is better characterized as “social grooming” and/or “peripheral awareness” (which she justifies as persons “want[ing] to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn’t viable”). Similarly, a survey of Twitter users found that a more specific social role of passing along messages that include a hyperlink is an expectation of reciprocal linking by followers.
Twitter is ranked the eleventh most visited website by Alexa’s web traffic analysis. Daily user estimates vary as the company does not publish statistics on active accounts. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits. In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing website in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had annual growth of 1,382 percent, increasing from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009. Twitter’s annual growth rate decreased from 7.8 percent in 2015 to 3.4 percent in 2017. An April 2017 statista.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the tenth most used social network based on their count of 319 million monthly visitors. In 2009, Twitter had a monthly user retention rate of forty percent.
As of November 16, 2017, the ten Twitter accounts with the most followers were:
Katy Perry: 106,382,080
Justin Bieber: 103,369,043
Barack Obama: 96,836,193
Taylor Swift: 85,626,915
Rihanna: 82,349,984
Ellen DeGeneres: 75,457,830
Lady Gaga: 73,652,976
YouTube: 70,433,605
Cristiano Ronaldo: 63,857,403
Justin Timberlake: 63,612,170
Here is the latest list of the Worldwide Top 25 Accounts (byFollowers) from Wikipedia:
Meat of the Twitter Matter
Trump.45 yearns and pines and strives for Twitter World Dominance. Here are the current actual facts as of December 3, 2017.
Trump is not in the Worldwide Twitter Top 10 in terms of followers (the gold standard metric) for Twitter heft. He is currently ranked at Worldwide #21, except he loses out to one Barrack Hussein Obama, his Presidential predecessor (and Trump’s eternal A-Number One bête noire of envy and desire), who stands at Worldwide #3, and is today the highest raked politician in the entire World, even though he has been out of office for almost a year.
The actual number of followers for each account bears out the disparity in Worldwide rankings for these two Presidents. Obama presents with a sterling total of 97.515 million followers. Trump.45 can claim a quite respectable total of 43.978 million on the other hand.
Obama will likely become only the Third Twitter Universal Powerhouse, becoming a 100-Million Man (Person) in about three months if his current growth pace continues. On his current pace, Trump.45 could reach that plateau in about two years and two months. No telling where Obama might be by then.
In this all important category comparison of Twitter reach and influence, as of December 2017, Obama has 53.5 million more followers than Donald Trump. Obama has lapped Trump (more than doubled the Trumpster’s potency). Trump does have two years to bulk up compared strictly on a relative basis to Obama’s timeline, based on the fact that Trump joined Twitter a t a later date in the first place.
Obama and Trump are the only two Twitter-era US Presidents, so the one-on-one comparison is apt. Twitter began in March 2006 and Obama joined in April 2007. Trump lagged and joined up in May 2009.
Even here though, Obama gets some prophetic kudos and bonus points for recognizing and joining a major new political tool within barely more than a year (April 29, 2007) after Twitter’s creation (well before he was elected President), while Trump limped in three years (May 4, 2009) after the social media platform startup. Wikipedia says joining Twitter was not Trump’s own idea, but suggested to him by a publicist (Peter Costanzo) in order to (surprise, surprise) hype a recently published Trump book (Think Like a Champion).
Is this yet another instance of Trump.45 copying what someone else has done? Wikipedia says joining Twitter was not Trump’s own idea, but suggested to him by a publicist (Peter Costanzo) in order to (surprise, surprise) hype a recently published Trump book (Think Like a Champion).
Who knows? Anyway Obama was first on the draw by 25 months to climb the Twitter Wave.
A Quick Trump Twit Account Digression for Fun
Another tidbit for Trump.45 twitter trivia fans is that unlike nearly all the bid players on Twitter, whose accounts are generally in the form @katyperry, or @justinbieber, or @BarackObamaor or @jimmyfallon, or @shakira, or @JLo.
Trump’s handle is the odd sounding @realDonaldTrump. This was not Trump’s preferred choice to be different. By the time Trump got around to joining up, @DonaldTrump username was already taken. My, my.
According to Costanzo, Trump tried to get his lawyers to sue or buy out the existing account holder to no avail. Costanzo implies the lawyers couldn’t find the guy in time, and they didn’t want to delay the book launch, so they just went with @realDonaldTrump.
I don’t know what eventually happened to this early Twitter bird’s account. Twitter Counter says there are 579 accounts with some variant of DonaldTrump in their usernames as of today. I wonder how Trump.45’s personal lawyers handle this one. Could it be they just ignore this despicable drafting on the Trumpian brand? Mellow Yellow (or Robin’s Egg Blue, to be more appropriate).?
The Rest of the Story on Trump’s Current Twitter Stats
From Twitter Counter, a standard source of Twitter analytics and related data, Obama’s account is listed by 227,367 users, while Trump..45’s account lags at 80.759, almost a 3:1 favorable advantage (2.81 times more listings). Winner: Obama. Also ran: Trump.45. In fairness, these results are accurate as of December 2017. Trump may surge sometime in the future. Who can tell?
A final critical potency measure for Twitter accounts is the Total Number of Tweets Sent, sort of a frequent use activity monitor. In raw numbers, Trump.45 seems to triumph over Obama in this category, as he furiously has twitted 36,535 times to Obama’s active, but relatively controlled total of 15,482 tweets more than 10 years.
Not so fast. Here the better statistical comparison may be the Power Ratio (PR), or the Tweet Effectiveness Quotient (TEQ), analogous to some baseball player analytics (Trump’s most serious sport activity as a high-school student). Who can forget the beautiful day when young Donald Trump was almost offered a Major League Baseball contract right out of his high school (the fabled New York Military Academy)? Except the offer never actually happened, except in Donald’s vivid dreams.
Anyway, to proceed. We suggest a new combo Twitter statistic comparing Total Followers Generated per Account Tweet Sent. The higher the result the better. Kind of like a Total Bases Score for Twitter.
Trump’s Tweet Effectiveness Quotient (TEQ) is then calculated as 43.98 million followers divided by 36.5 thousand tweets sent, or a TEQ of generating 1,205 followers per tweet.
Obama’s comparable TEQ is then 97.52 million followers divided by 15.5 thousand tweets sent, for a TEQ of generating 6,292 followers per tweet.
By this measure, again as of December 3, 2017, Obama is a crushing winner over Trump.45, as Obama’s effort performance is greater than 5 times more powerful at commanding Twitter users’ attention overall, tweet by tweet.
Sorry Donald, but President-wise, your Twitter stuff, while voluminous, is a little weak on substance. And Obama has been out of office, retired and sometimes on vacation, for nearly a year. We won’t count any of your 90-plus golfing outings this year as vacation, since you make important calls and stuff on the same days, and this doesn’t seem to interfere with your Twitting ability or desire.
Interim Conclusion
In this head to head match-up Donald J. Trump on Twitter comes up short and behind his favorite target of envy POTUS 44, yet again, this time on Twitter, Trump.45’s favorite go-to communications platform to bond with his peeps.
This result can be added to a large number of other comparisons with similar poor results for the Master of The Universe (I’m the Only One That Counts).
Trump.45 may do better on some of these contests later, but some of them are already engraved in the Permanent Record Book of U.S. Presidential Accomplishments forever, with no asterisks attached either.
A Few Examples: President Trump vs President Obama Straight-Up
Which of these Presidents had the largest in-person outdoor crowd at his Inauguration Ceremony?
Which of these Presidents had the largest in-person Outdoor Stadium Political Rally Crowd for his Nominating Convention?
Which of these Presidents had the largest in-person crowd for any kind of Outdoor Political Rally?
Which of these Presidents had the largest in-person crowd for an Election Night Victory Celebration?
Which of these Presidents had the largest in-person crowd Welcoming him on a Foreign County Visit?
Which of these Presidents received the Largest Number of Votes for President in a Single Election?
Which of these Presidents won More Electoral Votes in his First Presidential Election?
Which of these Presidents won the Popular Vote Majority in his Presidential Election?
Which of these Presidents has won a Grammy Award?
Which of these Presidents has the Worldwide Largest Number of Twitter Followers and the Highest TEQ Power Ranking?
No Way Trump. No Way Trump times 10. No Way Trump times 10 and counting.
Trump.45 will have to seek his place in history elsewhere, and on different grounds.
It’s good to have a challenge, particularly about stuff you care so deeply about
Facts Are Stubborn Things.
To Be Continued.
* Trump Morsel (TM) ™ A little word play. The term Trump Morsel (TM) is my creation., and published here on December 3, 2017 for the first time anywhere, to the best of my knowledge and belief. I do not intend to file for a formal copyright, patent, trademark, logo, or other form of intellectual property legal protection. At the same time, it is mine and not a derivative, copy, recycling, or rip-off of any other previous work, so far as I can tell.
As far as I am concerned, any person can use this concept, including Trump Morsel (TM) freely as they choose for political discussion and analysis purposes. The only exceptions are that I would not offer use to Donald Trump, the Trump family, Trump Organization and affiliated companies, their Golf Courses, Hotels, Real Estate, and Merchandise companies and partnerships, and the Donald Trump Presidential Campaign, for commercial purposes, if I can avoid it.
As an American citizen, I plain don’t like what happened to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 iconic Presidential Campaign Political Slogan, and how it was appropriated for private commercial financial gain 30-odd years later, after he died. Shame.
I can’t get in a legal scrap with the Trumps, their lawyers, and allies.; their financial resources are hugely too large, whatever the merits might be. Still, this work [Trump Morsel (TM)] is my creation, and I should get to choose which others can use it freely. First Amendment, Free Speech & Free Political Speech, and all that.
The ™ symbol in the item above is not a claim of trademark protection of any sort under U.S. laws or conventions. Heaven forefend. I am simply making a word play on the initials of Trump Morsel. If you don’t get it, I’m sorry.
I am making (attempting to make) a gentle, ironic joke to illustrate a point or two, in line with this commentary.
Amen and Hallelujah! God Bless the U.S. Constitution, our precious Bill of Rights (All of Them), and the Men and Women Who Actually Stand in Harm’s Way as Members of our Military Forces, in order to protect us.
God Bless America in future as in the past.