Comedian, Daily Show correspondent, and one-time psych professor at Greendale Community College John Oliver is not thrilled with the new White House Tumblr, which launched Friday. “I would like to see the White House maybe take it down and not do Tumblr,” he said at Saturday’s pre-White House Correspondents’ Dinner garden brunch. “That’s the main thing I would like to see: one page that says, ‘No, this is probably beneath the office of the Presidency. We’ll take this down.’” Oliver went on to say that, while he’s not very active on social media, it might be “necessary, I guess” for the Oval Office to communicate via today’s digital platforms.
“I think I really prefer the idea of a nineteenth-century president,” he admitted. “Writing long-hand. No phone calls. Messages by hand. Having message boys. It just seems like it’s asking for trouble, having a Tumblr page. What do you do on a Tumblr page? I’m criticizing it and I don’t even know what it is.” Oliver did not seem impressed when Intelligencer pointed out the blog’s promise to supply many hard g GIFs: “[GIFs] of what? Of legislation not passing?” The whole idea does sound less fun when you think about it that way.
