Monday, April 25, 2011

Culture: The Celebrity Apprentice & Star Jones by Kyle Phoenix

(I'm writing this because I've done lots of classes on the 48 Laws of Power and will start doing blogs and tv shows on the book and the Laws as well as Thick Face, Black Heart---stay tuned!)

I believe that so far the women and to some degree the men are trapped in that building with Star Jones. From purely the POV of a fellow student of the 48 Laws of Power, I have watched Star play a masterful game. Not only is she technically intelligent but she's a masterful psychological evaluator and has impeccable manners. I predict she's the winner! Even when she objects or is wronged or is in the wrong, she presents the most professional face and level of maturity. They've all gotten on her nerves at various stages (Dionne Warwick, NeNe, LaToya) and she's been honest but at the same time she's held back from losing her temper, her cool, her dignity.

I normally don't watch TV but I was on my way out one evening and watched it just to see what Celebrity Apprentice was as I was thinking could I use this in the classroom teachings I do. I was blown away (and late) by watching the construction of the show and particularly how Star Jones was laying in the cut. How she was applying her lawyering skills at negotiation, manipulation and evaluation to half a dozen people so effortlessly. They're putty in her hands. She loses I'm done. She gets tossed off I'm done watching.

The NeNe/LaToya two-shot where she brought them back in (saving Hope for the next fall guy position---Marlee and NeNe being her real competition) was an excellent tactical move. I'll also add that negotiating product placement for her book Satan's Sisters (five women on a daytime talk show--fiction---Lord, are any of us ready for her! lol) in the opening promos of EVERY show! Wonderful. No, no, it gets better----Star's deflecting a downgrading of her abilities and picking it up with a grand compliment-----"My best mentors so far have been Johnnie Cochran in law, Barbara Walters in television and now you, Mr. Trump in business"----I nearly fainted in ecstasy!!!!

LaToya----a little "special" and I think I mean that in a upper class/wealth way where she's steeped in being wealthy and treated a certain way and not use to this level of engagement and competition---never had a chance. I think she's in some ways genuinely kind and her apology to NeNe seemed real (the fact that Star orchestrated it made me delirious with joy!) and then Star bringing the two easiest targets to eliminate while leaving Marlee and Hope as lame ducks to get burned strategically in the future was orgasmic. She is a mistress at Thick Face, Black Heart! She wedged NeNe, still new in getting over her grudge against the slightly bougie LaToya's classist condescension---she would have no where to go but to aligning with Star against LaToya who was put between Star who's so neutral that Trump himself might be in danger from her and NeNe who she'd been offending for awhile so no alliance/support was possible. Delightful manipulation! I think Trump canned LaToya on the grounds that she was playing short game.

Ms. Star Jones is playing to win.

*****Update: She didn't win.  And sure as Pepsi I stopped watching when she was "fired" but I did feature her and Marc Lamont Hill on The Kyle Phoenix Show focusing on Resources: Persistence and Motivation, where he is interviewing her at an Entrepreneur Conference in Atlanta.*****************