“Like unsuspecting birds crashing into a window pane,” a USA Today scribe recently noted, “all the women but one have crashed into the glass ceiling of The Apprentice.”
According to the article, The Apprentice, Donald Trump’s hugely-popular reality TV show, “exposes” the glass ceiling that supposedly keeps women from becoming CEOs.
Well, as The Other Charlotte has noted, and as millions of viewers now know, last night Amy Henry, the last woman standing on The Apprentice, crashed and burned.
But an unsuspecting little bird crashing into a window pane?
More like bird of prey.
Even Trump, no stranger to the cut throat world of high finance, was staggered by Amy’s betrayal of her supposed boyfriend — she suggested he be fired!
As TOC has noted, poor ol’ Nick, the innocent male, blanched.
Amy had performed well up until last night, but the flunked the personal interviews — and how, Norma Foederer, Trump’s respected personal assistant, said she flat out wouldn’t want to be around Amy for long. Ditto moi — and the other interviewers from the Trump organization who talked to Amy.
Now, the glass-ceiling crowd is still likely to regard Amy’s firing as symptomatic of the prejudice against women — especially Ms. Foederer, who, they not doubt feel, turned on a woman to maintain her place in what they like to call a man’s world.
(By the way, re: Ms. Foederer, it was nice to, as they say, put a face with the voice — in my gossip monger days, writing or working on NYC gossip columns, I frequently had dealings with the always pleasant Ms. Foederer, the gatekeeper to The Donald.)
But here’s what floors me about the glass ceiling gang — you could sit by your TV and watch the gals of The Apprentice be weeded out solely on the basis of performance (or in Amy Henry’s case, a lousy interview that revealed her emptiness) and still blame the glass ceiling. I don’t get it.
Oh, but, on second thought, I do: The USA Today article cites all the usual factoids about women in the business world and stats on how many become CEOs.
What they want is not an equal chance — as all the women on The Apprentice had — but uniformity of outcome. The element of randomness, along with personality — they hate that. They also hate fair performance assessments.
They basically want a woman to be able to fail — and still get the top job.
By the way, as The Other Charlotte noted, Kwame, who really does seem like an unsuspecting bird, picked Omarosa to be on his team. That practically ensures that Bill Rancic will be the Apprentice — unless Trump does something unexpected like bringing back one of the contestants who performed well in the past.
By the way, I used to think of Trump as a publicity hound with a comb-over. No longer. He’s won my respect.
One of the things I like is his optimism (though I don’t necessarily like his yucky taste, and when I become a billionaire like The Donald, I’m not going to have an-all gilt apartment that looks like the Kress Collection — the dime store, not the art collection).
I saw the optimism again last night. With all sorts of reports of financial problems within the Trump empire, he congratulated his employees on their success and noted that things were going to be even better.
And you know what? They probably will.