Trump’s business is show business
How surreal was Bill Rancic’s moment of victory Thursday night on the finale of “The Apprentice”? Moments after Donald Trump chose the tall, middle-American everyman with teeth like juicy kernels of Iowa’s finest as his new, high-priced amanuensis, the walls of the boardroom started rolling back. It was as though the world were falling away, or the sky had torn open so that the studio audience might descend, woo-hooing, from the heavens.
Rancic, a 32-year-old former cigar salesman from Chicago, instinctively knew what to do next. He trotted down to the stage to join his oddly coiffed host and chose between two fabulous prizes: managing a Los Angeles golf course or overseeing the construction of a new Trump fortress in downtown Chicago. Come on down! But, wait, there was more. Rancic also won a brand-new Chrysler Crossfire, and an annual salary of $250,000!
Calvin Coolidge often is misquoted as saying, “The business of America is business.”
What he actually said, in a 1925 speech for the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C., was: “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.... Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence.... We want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism.”
Which, right there, explains the widespread preference for the misquote.
As it turns out, the chief business of America is business, of which show business makes up a substantial part. (With his trademark cotton-candy beehive and his penchant for giant gilt monograms, Trump seems to have instinctively gone straight to the original American pop-culture art form, the comic book, for an icon on which to model himself. He resembles no real-life -- or even movie -- mogul so much as he resembles the poignantly ostentatious Richie Rich.)
But when critics complain that pop culture has overtaken all other aspects of American culture, they are missing the mark. Pop culture is a product of American business. Business culture has become American culture.
If the finale of “The Apprentice” brought to mind an installment of “The Price Is Right,” it makes perfect sense. Rancic’s game-show-winner moment, Sam Solovey’s last-minute play for attention -- on the finale, he offered Trump $250,000 in exchange for a job -- even Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth’s flamboyant deceptions were all pure showbiz, just as “American Idol’s” Kelly Clarkson, Justin Guarini, Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard are all pure business.
So, for that matter, is Jessica Simpson -- who now is dutifully parlaying a mediocre vocal talent into a many-tentacled media empire.
When Manigault-Stallworth, in charge of making sure Simpson arrived on time at the venue where she was scheduled to perform, temporarily lost the singer through her own laziness, negligence or malice, she mock-chastised herself: “I have lost the biggest rock star in the country!” Surely, not even Jessica Simpson’s mom would stand by that characterization, but Manigault-Stallworth was displaying some of the few business skills she appears to have mastered: sucking up and lying through her teeth.
Sure, she was fired, but it took long enough. And, in the end, it was she who ultimately decided the outcome.
The blandly competent, ethical finalists, Rancic and Kwame Jackson, were pretty much neck and neck, and yet it seemed clear that Jackson would lose. Why him? Omarosa, Tonya Harding to his Nancy Kerrigan. The sociopathic former White House worker was factor one in Jackson’s downfall. Trump was right to fire him for hiring Manigault-Stallworth (and early on, at that).
In American business, nice guys do get ahead -- mainly because a fall guy always comes in handy when a shark gets caught.
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Reality rankings
Nearly 28 million people watched Thursday night’s final showdown between nice guy Bill Rancic and nicer guy Kwame Jackson on NBC’s “The Apprentice,” making it Thursday’s and the week’s most popular show.
The 9-11 p.m. battle to join Donald Trump’s organization didn’t, however, come close to the nearly 52 million who witnessed the finale to the first “Survivor” in August 2000. CBS’ “Survivor All-Stars,” meanwhile, dominated in the direct face-off with Fox’s “American Idol,” with the former drawing 18.5 million at 8-8:30 p.m., while “Idol’s” results show had 14.9 million viewers.