As The Other Charlotte notes below, Kwame Jackson lost out on Donald Trump’s $250,000 a year apprentice slot the second he picked back-stabbing slacker and publicity hound Omarosa for his team.
The Apprentice has been great TV, and it’s also the best management training program going. Should I come back as a CEO, The Apprentice will be my Harvard and Yale.
Speaking of Harvard Business School, Kwame surely wasn’t a great ad for his alma mater was he?
The finalists, Bill Rancic and Kwame Jackson, as you know, had to assemble teams from previously fired contestants to run a golf tournament (Bill) and put on a Jessica Simpson concert (Kwame).
Kwame was full of clich’s about not wanting to micromanage. Not micromanaging, he let Omaraosa foul up his chances for The Job with The Donald.
“Omarosa lied to you,” Trump said during the waning moments of the world’s longest job interview. “She deceived you. Not only once. She lied to you twice. Why didn’t you fire her?”
Either business school isn’t all it’s cracked up to be or Kwame had the ague the day his Harvard business profs talked about firing. He certainly skipped Hiring 101.
When Bill and Kwame were told to assemble their teams, I thought Omarosa would suffer the same shame I suffered when the leader picked teams to play Red Rover in kindergarten.
But, with two choices left, Kwame asked Omarosa to come right over and join his team. Trump noted this early choice of the show’s most disloyal and laziest member.
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Frey had an interesting take on Omaraso’s Kwame-dsstroying behavior last night:
“Inquiring minds want to know: Did Omarosa throw the competition on purpose? And, if so, what’s in it for her?
“Oh, silly us. That’s easy. More publicity.”
I have to say I ended up liking Trump, a shrewd business man, if not the greatest wife-picker in Manhattan. He was also unfailingly polite, even when uttering his trademark words, “You’re fired!”
In the end, George and Carolyn, the Trump executives who appeared regularly on the show, went out of their way to praise Kwame, the professional thing to do, even though we’d just watched him practically urge Omarosa to do him in.
Bill didn’t impress me as much as he had in the past — I felt he should have been a bit more effusive in thanking Trump for hiring him.
Nevertheless, he showed his stuff earlier. He had stood up and challenged a semi-shady business practice early on (Kwame was selling autographs, giving the impression that he was a famous ballplayer or something, to lure people into Planet Hollywood, which the teams were taking turns managing).
When it looked like he might win, he was already thinking about “generational wealth.” You sort of know that he’ll do well and that he really will become a millionaire.
PS. Can you believe that, at the age of 76, George Ross has become a TV star?
That’s the kind of can-do and optimism that made the show a hit — well, that and the always-to-be-counted-on-for-nastiness Omarosa.