Since the season
Finale of The Apprentice II last week I’ve been snooping around for goss about how Kelly got along with his winning job at Trump Place and what he’s been up to since his win.
Kelly won the show in the US in November 2004, winners win a guaranteed year working at Trump and from what I could work out Kelly’s winning task was to be involved in over-seeing the development at Trump Place in New York in the same way Bill oversaw the building in Chicago.
Despite spending ages browsing around to see what Kelly got up to with the project I can’t find a smidgen of a mention about what he’s contributed to Trump Place anywhere.
In the Season III premiere of the show, which ran during Kelly’s winning year in the US, Trump says that Kelly’s been doing very well in his job but doesn’t go into specifics as to what exactly he’s done.
The hysterical thing is that instead of there being loads of info about Kelly hotfooting it through the streets of New York madly helping with organising the building, the only information I’ve found is about him being put in charge of Trump Ice shortly after his win, working from a hovel of an office next door to – not Melania herself – but rather her assistant.
After Kelly’s win News Week carried this info in a story saying that he was being used as a marketing campaign for the loser product Trump Ice and doesn’t actually have the power to do anything except talk about Donald and The Apprentice in glorified ways.
I reckon this could definitely be true – the way he speaks in every interview I’ve found is clearly plotted to be perfectly scripted in plastic-speak.
He makes sure he mentions qualities about Trump and his company so as to present both in an idealised light – he mentions things like Trump being self-effacing with a good sense of humour and very passionate.
He also talks about what he’s done since the show which includes writing a book called: Take Command: 10 Leadership Principles I Learned in the Military and Put to Work for Donald Trump.
As for what the most important thing is that he learnt – guess what ridiculous unorginal-something it is? Keeping his integrity.
And also - get this: that you should always choose the more difficult right above the easier wrong. Can you believe it? Not only the yawny integrity thing but that he could make money from sprouting such junk?
Also the way the military’s so much a part of who he is is propoganderishly freaky - more and more I’m convinced they deliberately hid this as being an important part of who he is up until the end of the show.
They probably knew he’d have a bunch of detractors if he came across as a war-person too soon – so they kept it secret to focus on him being human sort of thing.
It can be no coincidence that the other creepy thing he’s doing that’s linked to this is that he’s hosting a show called the GI Factory on The Military Channel – I had no clue such a thing existed.
The show’s about military equipment and technology and where they’re made and suddenly I’m thinking that Trump could have shares in one of these military businesses too?
A third venture Kelly’s gone into is what’s called Trump Direct Media which he supposedly started as a team with Trump. The company seems to be a celebrity marketing company that organises placing celebrities in particular advertising campaigns etc – like the basketball players in the finale.
The way it’s all manipulated to make things appear as if they’re happening for our entertainment when instead they’re intended to brainwash us into buying something is very hectic isn’t it?
I don’t cope with it - I find it oppressive and not what being entertained is. Entertainment's supposed to free our minds in the most exciting and interesting ways possible and shouldn’t ever force us to watch people kissing each other's butt - which is clearly the last thing someone like Kelly strives to do.
Same thing with Bill who seems to serve exactly the same marketing function as Kelly at Trump. In the News Week article they mentioned Bill too saying that he’ll often appear at events, chat about his experience in The Apprentice and then hand over to the marketing department.
The thing that annoys me so much is that I don’t like someone tricking me or thinking I’m so thick and desperate for entertainment that I won’t be irritated or feel disrespected when a winner I’ve watched for over thirteen weeks doesn’t get to do the promised job I was told he was playing for.
To me the ideal situation would be if Trump was honest about it all being his glorified advert and made it so he was looking for candidates to be his marketing spokespeople specifically.
The fact that it doesn’t have anything to do with the eventual job that they’re getting is obviously why many of them were so useless when it actually came to doing business and also why that final deciding task that involved them making chocolate was such a joke.
I just don’t know how I feel about watching the next season. I enjoy the contestants and experiencing their loathing – which is defs genuine – but I don’t like all the trickeries - particularly it being sold as Reality TV when what it is is an infomercial.
Also, the way all the products force themselves into the drama and become so important frustrates me. Why should the products get free advertising in every aspect of the press surrounding the show just because Pepsi or whoever paid Donald Trump millions to be in the show?
That’s it! That’s the trouble with it – I find it difficult to support something where everyone involved in the show is getting way more out of it than the people who are actually watching, and as far as I can see this is the perspective The Apprentice comes from, while assuming we’re too naïve to realise it.
The one advantage is that the show usually delivers when it comes to conflict between contestants and also tries to introduce different things in new series. Whether or not the candidates being divided between the haves and have-nots makes it interesting enough to commit to will reveal itself when the third season starts sometime later this year.
SABC3 has announced that the second season of the South African version of the show has been postponed. Unfortunately I don't know why but it was initially scheduled to happen round-about September so I reckon Season III will happen sometime then.
I’ll let you know the official date as soon as it’s confirmed.