Dear Donald, You Male Chauvinist Pig
A guest blog by Betsy Bair, The Meetings Group’s editorial director: I think a lot of people have been turned off at this point by the TV show, “The Apprentice,” but even if you didn’t watch it this season, you may be interested to read this letter I composed to Donald Trump after the season finale.
Dear Donald:
This season, for the first time, you chose two women as the finalists to work for the Trump organization.
Whether you planned that for ratings (since the last two seasons ended with male finalists and winners, and you didn’t want any more hate mail), or whether you believed they were the two best candidates will forever remain in your and producer Mark Burnett’s hearts and minds.
However, I believe that the two women were the most qualified of the group, and you did end up hiring the best candidate of the two: Kendra.
What galls me, however, are your reasons for almost not hiring her: She cried in the board room when talking about how fantastic her team of three had performed on the final task (to project manage an important event), which clinched her lead. Obviously, it meant a lot to Kendra that she was able to pull a team together and inspire them, especially since they hadn’t gotten along earlier. Hers were tears of pride, joy, and thanks.
So while you valued her ability to lead a team, and you forgave her for crying because “it was a nice cry,” you made a big deal out of the fact that she cried at all, saying that you hate it when women cry in business.
Earlier in the season you fired a male hot head, Chris, who cried when he got the finger (that finger you point, you know, when you say “you’re fired!”). You were actually kind to him when he broke down. So why was Kendra taken to task for crying?
I know a lot of successful women, me included, who have cried in front of their bosses over the span of their careers. I dare say there are successful men, too, who have cried, or at least sniffled, in front of their bosses.
Is it a sign of weakness? To you it must be. But, get used to it, Donald. When people are passionate about their work, emotion–and sometimes tears–will enter into the work place. I’ll bet you taught your sons not to cry, too?
I’ll take a Kendra over a man who can’t cry any day.
And, while I’m bashing your male chauvinism, it seemed to me that the projects you offered the winner to oversee–either to manage the Miss Universe Contest, or to remodel a Florida mansion priced at $100 million–paled in comparison to the real estate projects, including managing construction of skycrapers in big cities, that were offered to your male winners in past seasons.
As a gender, females may cry a little more often, but that doesn’t mean we can’t manage with the big boys, er, I mean, strong men. And we can handle the tall buildings, too.
Fondly, oops, I mean Sincerely,
Betsy Bair
May 24th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Dear Betsy:You lost me at “[he] did end up hiring the best candidate of the two: Kendra.” Seriously, though, I was troubled by your comment that planning an event on the magnitude of the Miss America pageant was an inferior project. Don’t you think that for your reader base of meeting planners this would be the greatest prize of all?Irwin
May 24th, 2005 at 10:12 am
Hey Betsy, you just now noticing what a pig The Don is :-)? I’ve never been able to stand that blowhard, and his chauvinism is a small part of it. Great letter.
May 24th, 2005 at 11:20 am
I agreed with almost everything you said, Betsy, until you chided Donald for offering Kendra the Miss Universe pageant. Why do you think he had the contestants planning events all season long? Because it’s HARD, particularly for the uninitiated. Producing a multi-day event, loaded with technology, in a foreign country, with major security issues, intense international media interest, a multi-million dollar television deal, and countless people and personalities that all have to work together, takes skills an engineer or an architect can’t even imagine. But what makes it even harder is dealing with people who devalue the profession. Shame on you!
May 24th, 2005 at 11:26 am
Betsy Great letter to Donald. I don’t think crying is bad as long as you don’t let it get out of hand. Crying is showing your human side and sometimes we need that form of release…it’s a tool to help us cope. When it’s all said and done you still have to Keep On Punchin in life. Too much is made of Donald…he has God given talents as everyone does…it’s when we don’t use those talents that God has given to us to help our fellow man that we have failed. In a way the show “The Apprentice” really degrades our fellow man and that is wrong. We should help, encourage and build-up our fellow man because what goes around comes around. Do onto others as you would have them do unto you. If we all followed this rule given to us by God this world would be a lot better place to live to make a living and to do business. Put God First in everything you do and you will start to see him work in your life. This is The Best business advice around but…you won’t hear it spoken at Harvard. Regards,Basilio Reyes Jrbasilioreyesjr@msn.com
May 24th, 2005 at 12:08 pm
My big objection to the projects offered to this year’s winners was that they were so, well, girly. Yes, the pageant is a huge, complex, and important event, but can you imagine The Donald offering that up as a project to his previous year’s male winner? Or the option to remodel a house–albeit an obscenely big house–as opposed to building a skyscraper? The very choice of projects offered to the winner seemed pretty sexist to me. Not that they’re not big projects, but that they’re both firmly in the stereotypical “what men think women should be interested in” mode, and totally unlike what the male winners of the past have been offered.But, really, what else could we have expected? *sigh*
August 29th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
[…] been covering all kinds of meetings for MeetingsNet. Meet The Meetings Group Editorial Director, Betsy Bair and Face2Face blogger and Association Meetings Editor Sue Pelletier. They’d just returned from […]
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