The Apprentice: Why Omarosa Lost

I find it particularly ironic that Omarosa was the one who took Tammy aside in the very first episode to tell her why going to lunch in the middle of a challenge wasn’t a good idea. Yet here we had Omarosa doing pretty much the same thing.

In addition to her reputation for excuses, she also became quickly known as patronizing, condescending, inflexible, and unwilling to listen to anybody else’s thoughts. If the idea wasn’t hers, it was worthless. One early example was the way she reacted when her team didn’t like her idea of picking a name randomly for the second project manager, before they had even found out what the challenge might be. Then there was her hanging up on her teammates when she didn’t feel the need to explain herself to them. I could go on and on (and on and on) but we lived through it once already, so why punish ourselves?

One other issue that needs to be discussed is her accusation that Ereka was racist because she used the term, “pot calling the kettle black.” As recapper Betsy Wasser noted at the time, I did some quick investigation and found that the term does not have any racial connotations whatsoever, despite the way it might sound to the uninformed. So Omarosa claiming it was a racist statement is akin to the official a few years back who thought the word “niggardly” was racist – both of them were clueless yet acted like they knew what they were talking about. In fact, between this and some other comments she made – such as her statement that the other women were intimidated by strong African-American women – it seemed to me a bit like Omarosa was looking for racist attitudes where none existed. We certainly never saw anything that indicated anything resembling racism from her teammates – in fact, the only person who ever brought it up was Omarosa herself. And considering that Kwame was the one who selected her to go into the boardroom and reacted to her attitude and excuses like everybody else, it’s clear that we can safely say her race had nothing to do with anything.

But getting back to the point at hand, when it was time for her team to go into the boardroom because of their horrible loss, Omarosa felt safe despite everything we’ve already discussed. She didn’t think Kwame would bring her in because of the work she’d done in this particular challenge. But even though she thought Kwame was on her side, he knew what she was just as much as the others did.

And even if he didn’t initially think he was going to take her in, the way she acted in the boardroom and the way Trump reacted to her could easily have shown Kwame that it would be a good idea to take her in – it was pretty obvious that Trump wanted her gone. Either way, Kwame was smart to take her in. He simply had to declare that they took a risk and it didn’t work. No excuses. Then he could just sit back and let the women fight it out.

And they did.

Trump wasn’t terribly happy with Heidi, but Omarosa was the one who thought she was better than everybody, made excuses for everything, and had a huge chip on her shoulder. It certainly didn’t help that she burst back into the boardroom without being called while Trump and the others were still deliberating.

She said she stepped up and worked hard. Hmmm, that must have been between games of basketball with the kids in front of the apartment. Or maybe it was on those occasions when her head wasn’t hurting – wait, no, those times only came during off hours. Maybe then it was when she wasn’t making excuses or acting like she was better than everybody else around her – wait again, I can’t think of many times like that.

Trump had fired a warning shot across Omarosa’s bow during his firing of Jessie. He made it clear that her attitude sucked and she needed to correct it. She didn’t – she ignored him just the way she ignored her other teammates many times over.

She did not show leadership, but caused internal fighting. She made excuse after excuse to try to explain away her often bizarre behavior. There was no way Trump could see Omarosa working for him in any sort of fashion, let alone as a top executive. Omarosa had more chances than she deserved, and she blew every one of them. That is why Omarosa lost.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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