Can a person go to business school without a college degree?
In many senses, it’d be far from a reward. It’d be fascinating, train wreck TV. I don’t think she’s realized, even now, how thoroughly she’s discredited herself. Short of sporting a silk banner emblazoned Incompetent Ditz across her chest, Omorosa couldn’t do possibly reveal her shortcomings more clearly. She’s actually blind and arrogant enough to believe her own schtick, and there’d be hideous fascination in watching exactly how far her delusion would take her. She was a gold mine for the show as a villain. Hell, she single-handedly sandbagged the only other African American contestant. But I’d guess Burnett will go for fresh meat and gamble on new dynamics, letting Omorosa fade into well deserved obscurity.
She tried to play the show for her own ends but never once got it.
On to more important thoughts:
If you won, which project would you head up and why?
I would have picked the golf course project. It looks slightly more manageable.
I’v seen maybe 10 minutes of the show, tops, but it’s been the hot water-cooler conversation topic from Day One, so I feel like I know contestants I never even SAW!
That said, I’ve been skeptical all along about just what kind of job the winner would get, and what kinds of real responsibilities he/she would get.
Is the winner (Bill, I gather) REALLY going to be the boss of a major construction project? Even though I’m pretty sure he has no real experience or skills in that department? He may get some really cool prizes, but I’d be astonished if he’s really the boss of squat! Surely, most of the serious planning has already been done, and most of the people who’ll really be running the project are already in place. How likely is it those people, genuine professionals who know how to run such projects, will treat Bill with respect, or even take him seriously?
I’m not knocking the show, really. Millions of people have enjoyed it, and that’s fine. But I don’t see how the silly games people have played on this show prove their qualifications to run a major business. Bill may turn out to be a great businessman, but selling lemonade on the street and running flea markets are pretty silly gimmicks to use to choose an executive! A winner on “The Apprentice” hasn’t demonstrated any more real business skills than a winner on “American Idol” or “The Gong Show.”
That show was just painful to watch. I hope he doesn’t bring back Troy, because I’ll be pulled into watching again just to cheer him on.
Obviously, Troy was my favorite, but I also thought that Heidi did fairly well. They both have a spark that neither Bill nor Kwame have - but apparently that’s not what Trump was looking for.
I’ve wondered about that. I got tossed, willy-nilly, into two construction projects and it rapidly became apparent that no amount of dedication, grit and sleepless nights would substitute for experience. The learning curve is just too drastic: bullhead Ts? steel standards? Whaa…?
It sounds like the Chicago project is already underway, which means the Trump organization has already chosen the architect, CM firm, etc. Probably the full contingent of lawyers, in-house engineers, etc. comes with the package, so maybe Bill’s job will be to navigate the admittedly treacherous waters of Chicago political infrastructure. It’s a town where the watchdogs need watchdogs to get things done right, not to mention approximately within budget.
Bill will need every iota of his manic energy and street smarts.
Actually, Kwame really did win this one.
Trump said something about how Bill didn’t need to worry, because he’d be given LOTS of supervision. Namely himself.
Cite! Cite! I wanna read it!
Ahem. I can now pat myself on the back as I backed Bill in the very first Apprentice thread. pat pat
Now that I’ve gotten that over with, the biggest problem with choosing the construction job is that you’re only guaranteed a job for a year. The tower won’t be completed until at least 2006. The golf club will be running by August so you’ve got much more scope to really put your mark on things.
Omarosa was not a plant, worse for her. She’s not amusing anymore, she’s just sad. I predict that she’s about take a nose dive at full afterburner. It wouldn’t surprise me if divorce were in the cards. No mere human, including her husband, could possibly be up to the task of providing her with emotional support even on her good days. I can’t imagine what she’s like now.
One thing that I was a bit surprised to see in these last few episodes is that Trump and some of the gang actually seem to be sort of bonding. Trump has got to be one of the world’s worst actors so I have to think it’s genuine. Did anybody else notice this?
How could he have known? He could have simply asked, which it was incumbent upon him to do. One or two phone calls, tops; either talk to one of the producers, or go straight to Trump, himself, or even George, who was following him around. Here’s what he should have said and done:
“Mr. Trump/Mr. Producer/George, I need to know if it’s within my power for this particular assignment to fire Omarosa. I’ve just learned that she has outright lied to me and the other members of my team, seriously jeopardizing not only this event, but potential future events with this star, who may never want to come back to this venue again if she’s not treated well, not to mention the actual safety of the star. It’s my considered opinion that Omarosa’s presence is detrimental and costly. Is there an administrative assistant in your organization who might be available to be pulled away from their regular duties to assist with this project?”
The worst he’ll hear is ‘No’, in which case, at least Trump knows that’s what he would have done had it been within the “rules,” or in the “real” job were he to be hired.
Make no mistake, as much as I loathe that vile waste of skin, Omarosa did not cost Kwame this job – Kwame’s inability to manage her cost him this job. He failed, plain and simple.
As a resident of Los Angeles who lives very close to Trump’s Ocean Trails Golf Club on the Palos Verdes Penninsula, I can tell you that that property has the potential to cause major, major headaches. It’s no surprise that the 18th hole practically slid into the sea in 1999. There’s a famous sign on the road you have to take to get to it that can be seen here (scroll down to the 2nd to last picture) that reads, “Portuguese Bend Landslide Area Constant Land Movement Next 0.8 Miles Use Extreme Caution.” And they’re not kidding.
A leak in a main sewer line was blamed for compromising the porous clay, triggering an old landslide and the property was tied up on litigation for years. I don’t know what, if any, resolution was found. Even Trump concedes that this property comes with a lot of ready-made problems:
Not to say that Trump’s incapable of that promise (if anyone can do it, he’d probably be the one). But I sure wouldn’t want to win this kind of competition and have my first assignment out of the box be a project with that many problems. I think he made the only right choice. Besides, with the Chicago project, he gets to work on it, literally, from the ground up and watch his work take form. The golf course is pretty much already completed, they’re just waiting to reopen it sometime this Summer. Yawn.
Great show, great result.
What Smeghead said. Trump said several times, jokingly but seriously at the same time, that Bill was going to have LOTS of supervision…and the last one of those times he said it would be by him.
However, I think it will be him only somewhat. George and Carolyn were on Deborah Norville’s MSNBC show the other night and they said whoever won would be working with and assisted by lots of seasoned executives and people who were experts in their field…that Trump wasn’t about to turn total control of a major project over to someone so green.
O is screwed, and I think she knows it.
Horribly nervous laughs and a forced smile so scretched that her face was nothing but wall to wall teeth - it was all she could do. Nobody likes her, not even Trump - and I don’t really think they will use her for anything next season. If they do, it will just be yet another reinforcement of how delusional she is.
While there’s certainly merit in that line of thinking, I differ in my conclusion. While Bill’s only “guaranteed” a job for a year, that doesn’t mean he’ll only have the job for a year. I doubt Trump will kick him to the curb at the end of his time there if he’s been doing a good job (and if he’s not doing a good job, he won’t be keeping it whether he’s in Chicago or L.A.). See my post above for why I think the golf course project is going to be a nightmare. And there’s also no guarantee that it’ll actually be opened by August. Just last month they were still getting (conditional) permits from the California Coastal Commission that include making additional landslide repairs (cite).
Holy cow, that Omarosa is just poison. Conniving, lying, bitchy . . . and then she has the nerve to tell People magazine that people don’t like her because she’s black! No, honey, people don’t like you because you’re awful.
She totally submarined Kwame, and I don’t see how she can spin it in her favor. Either she did it on purpose, in which case she’s a vindictive bitch, or she did it unintentionally, in which case she’s totally incompetent. Either way, she bald-faced lied about the phone call she received at dinner. Personally, I think she did it on purpose. She sure likes to trade on being a “strong black woman,” but, like VEB said, she sure didn’t mind sticking it to the strong black man.
But, like Carolyn (is that the name of the blond executive?), I think in the end Kwame bears the blame for that as well, since he picked Omarosa for his team. AS she said, that was a huge gamble at a crucial time in the game. And I did think Kwame was too hands off; I thought the right man won. Though Bill’s teeth are so large and straight and white I was nearly blinded by them.
As for the projects, I would have picked the Chicago project as well. Bigger deal, more centrally located, chance to build a reputation in his home town, chance to work not just in real estate and sales, but real estate, sales, and construction, chance to get in on the ground floor of a project. IMO it was the obvious pick, career-wise, for anyone.
I really got sucked into this show – the first reality series to hook me. Though I was really put off by the women trading on their T&A early on. The show got much more interesting, IMO, when they knocked that nonsense off. And the decision of some of the women to pose in their scanties for a men’s magazine – poor judgment, IMO. The smartest thing Omarosa did was pass on that.
And damned if I haven’t been doing a 180 on Sam. The times I’ve seen him on television since his firing he’s seemed smooth, poised, good-humored and charming. Then he shows up in Trump’s boardroom wearing a beauty contestant’s gown to help Trump advertise his beauty pageant. Then I see him on t.v. the other day and he’s got quite an impressive and expensive home and is apparently truly successful in his own right. And now he comes on Trump’s show and offers to pay Trump $250,000 to go to work for him.
I started out detesting that little shit, and now I find myself liking him quite a bit. I hope Trump will seriously consider hiring Sam and that he wasn’t just humoring him or trying to spare him embarrassment on the show. Trump has said many times that Sam was brilliant, and that he thought that Sam would either succeed enormously or completely sink whatever company he ended running. I’m thinking that with Trump as his mentor, reining him in and teaching him when to gamble and when to play it safe, there is no telling how far he could go. And I think that he’d be loyal to Trump to his dying day, whether he continued to work for him or not.
Or, am I making too much of this. 
Probably.
I wouldn’t get too teary-eyed about Sam’s “gesture.” I doubt it was spontaneous.
I bet most B schools would let him in after his performance. The biggies like Harvard and Stanford wouldn’t though, unless he really aced his GREs.
Omarosa, damn. Just plain damn. What a sympathy whore. Donald was right. If Kwame didn’t think he could fire her, he should have assigned her to sit in the hotel kitchen and supervise the dishwashers. Kwame said he couldn’t spare the manpower, but hell, she was a ball and chain. She had the effect of cancelling out two other people.
I would have chosen the tower because I would have thought that it would be more near and dear to Trump’s heart. Trump = Tower. He’s always had a skyscraper fetish, and if you want a chance to make it big with him, that’s the way to go — nurture his baby. Of course, failure will be the end of you, but you have to believe that you’re up to the challenge.
Congratulations to Bill!
As a couple of people have observed, Bill isn’t going to lose his job when the year is up, as long as he’s doing a good job. And even if he leaves the Trump organization then, he’ll have made some hellacious contacts in his home town – staying in Chicago is obviously the right thing to do.
[ot]Happy birthday, Moody Bastard![/ot]
Some great George and Carolyn (or should I say Lady Di?) moments:
Anyone notice Carolyn getting so annoyed at George when he said running a golf tournament was much easier than running a Jessica Simpson concert? She actually closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath, rather than rip the old duffer a new one. That, and George saying Jessica Simpson was gorgeous, to gales of laughter (some of it nervous, some of it brown-nosing, but I will say that mine was genuine) were really fun.
Carolyn actually looked quite embarrassed when Trump was complimenting her. Seeing her during the golf tournament illustrated that she looks better when her hair is windblown and casual than it does when she has Blonde Helmet Head. She could use some loosening up, but like George, she grew on me. They’re a big reason why I’ll watch The Apprentice II.
Was it just me, or did Bill look terribly geeky and weird during the golf tournament? Maybe it was that Members Only-style jacket, that nervous grimace, or the horse teeth flashing everywhere. However, I do like Bill, and I wished that Trump had asked him about the rumors regarding him and Amy. I was more curious about that than about Nick and Amy, or as Trump called them, the most boring couple in the world.
Thenk yew. What a thoughtful little Twick!