sexism, Trump style

YOU'RE HIRED!

I know that season 3 of The Apprentice is now old news, but today's Gazette didn't think so (See Lisa Fetterman's "Always the Apprentice, Never the CEO" on D2), so I get to riff a bit on how this awful season went down. Hurrah!

Yes, I watch. Because it airs on Thursday night (TV Night) it even gets taped while the group of us watch SURVIVOR, then CSI, then ER. Anyone still awake enough - or drunk enough - to stomach the barrage of Type-As and corporate logic settles in for one more hour for The Donald and his candidates/cast while we finish off the last of the wine. (Incidentally, The Apprentice is the one show where talking is allowed throughout - not just during the commercials).

This season actually started out in a gross-but-interesting kind of way - at least it got us all intrigued enough to want to keep an eye on it. "Street Smarts" v. "Book Smarts" pitted folk with high school degrees and profitable businesses against college-bred with successful careers against each other. Entrepreneurs v. Intellectuals, Poor kids v. Rich kids, Achievers v. Overachievers. The Donald made no bones about who he admired more right off the bat - legitimizing the street smarts as those who knew what it was like to work from the ground-up; who had experienced how tough it was 'out there,' who weren't afraid to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. His apparent animosity for the book smarts were firmly rooted in a bizarre form of anti-intellectualism, the kind that Todd Gitlin noted way back in 2000 with the ascendance of Bush during the election that year.

Now the binary didn't play itself in any truly unexpected ways throughout the season - much like SURVIVOR's "women v. men" season 9 dichotomous strategy - except that the final episode featured two women - an Apprentice first: the Mary Kay Lady (Tana) v. the Real Estate Broker (Kendra). And the winner - "book smart" Kendra - ended up with a shit job under the Trump empire: renovating Trump's mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. Mm-hm.

OK, granted, she had a choice of two jobs, but the other was so horrendous as to be laughable: running the Miss America pageant.

Keep in close mind, of course, the fates of the last two "winners": squeaky clean white boys Bill Rancic and Kelly Perdew. The former chose overseeing construction of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago and the latter is working in New York for both Trump Place (real estate development) and for Trump Ice (bottled water). Also worthy of mention is that neither Rancic nor Perdew were ever chided for crying or told how attractive they were.

Lillian Robinson, Principal extraordinaire of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, said it well:

Even when you win, you end up with a job suitable for a girl...There's still a stereotyping of the kind of managerial position that is appropriate for women.

Interesting that Fitterman calls it "chauvinism" on the part of Trump, not what it is: sexism of the truest and most institutional, systemic kind. She did, however, point out that

Trump would never admit to such a thing as chauvinism. He'd probably point to Carolyn Kepcher, the trusty, poker-faced lieutenant who has sat beside him through all three installments of The Apprentice.

Unfortunately, she couldn't resist the opportunity to quote someone as saying Kepcher was an "ice sculpture."

This is, again, not new. In fact, old-school double-standards and crappy gender (and race) politics seem par for the formula for the folks pulling the strings down at NBC.

Recall, if you will, angermonger Chris' undisputed homophobia over the Dove body wash ad challenge. Or Carolyn's outrage (and Trump's comment over the "repulsive decision") directed at Ivana's underwear-flash while Jennifer and Sandy were applauded for having "utilized their attractiveness and sex appeal," an effective maneuver because "New Yorkers love pretty ladies!" during the chocolate bar campaign in Episode 13 of season 2. Or the fact that race parity is nowhere in sight (has there ever even been a Latino/a on the show, ever?). Same old, same old goes for the casting of and "exotic" localing (and exoticization of the locales' locals) on SURVIVOR (which, admittedly, I have watched since Season I).

Witness also the charge of The Apprentice's female candidates/cast heading to MAXIM in droves after the shows air so that guys like this can call them whores.

The Apprentice is designed so that its winner will 'fit' with the corporate structure already in place. And it is designed so that women and anyone non-white will not 'earn' the invite to the Boys Club. And if they do, they'll be penalized like Kendra: spending the next year of her life putting off her own successful real estate gig and choosing million-dollar drapes for The Donald.

Ugh.