More on Omarosa…
As noted, The Other Charlotte and I seem fated today to write about the tendency towards bitchery that sometimes afflicts our gentle sex.
My take on celeb feminist Naomi Wolf’s belated (like about 20 years!) accusations that 73-year-old Shakespeare professor Harold Bloom sexually harassed her are immediately below this post.
Meanwhile, I want to add some thoughts of my own to Charlotte’s persuasive thoughts on Omarosa, the wicked witch of The Apprentice.
Jen Armstrong has a piece defending Omarosa in the Philadelphia Daily News.
Ms. Armstrong is offended when when people apply the b-word to Omarosa. “I always cringe when I hear people referring to assertive women that way,” writes Armstrong. “Martha Stewart? Bitch. Sen. Hillary Clinton,—-. It’s so tired.”
Ms. Armstrong, who had noticed the Inkwell’s running commentary on The Apprentice and Omarosa, called and quoted me in the piece: “She’s a total bitch and she lives in a fantasy world where she’s so much more competent than she really is. She thinks of herself as the ultimate professional, but she didn’t bother to learn how to pronounce Isaac Misrahi’s name before going to talk to him.”
“Oh, come on. Does that make her a bitch,” responds Armstrong.
No. Not learning to pronounce Mizrahi’s name before asking him for a huge favor does not make her a bitch. It makes her a nincompoop.
What makes Omarosa a bitch is the way she treats her fellow competitors and team members. She said in front of Trump and Heidi, a team member, that Heidi had “no class.” Ironically, Heidi demonstrated class by performing well in the face of bad news from home. (Her mother, who wanted her to stay on the show, is having an unexpected operation for cancer.)
While Heidi wiped away her tears, held her head high and went on, contributing to her team’s eventual victory, Omarosa was malingering by holding endless meetings at which she demanded that her team mates report their progress to her. (See The Other Charlotte on this, too.) She was seen lounging while the others toiled.
When holding meetings got old as a way of avoiding work, Omarosa announced she had a headache. She then went outside and shot a few hoops with the neighborhood kids.
But more than the slacking, it’s the way she treats people that makes Omarosa richly deserving of the b-label. Even Donald Trump, a denizen of the famously rough and tumble world of New York real estate, was shocked by Omarosa’s rudeness. “You were rude. You are rude,” said an obviously shaken Trump. Omarosa is the sort of person who can make an office hell for other people.
She is far more than the “abrasive” Armstrong is willing to concede.
I cringe when I hear bitches defended as merely being assertive women.
It is a disservice to all of us.