That is so full of shit. 1. So you want a guy at the helm who has so much personal experience with bankruptcies and receiverships? Yeah, you do what the law allows. But only after your competitors or your "business skills" place your head on a platter. 2. Utter bullshit. The show is a farce. The people who get fired are the ones who do not exhibit enough bombast to keep the show colorful. The show has nothing to do with meritocracy and everything to do with ratings and self-perpetuation. And that's fine as low-brow entertainment goes. But let's not bullshit about "business lessons."
"I teach from the Harvard Business School cases; they're not as exciting as what's on 'The Apprentice,' " said Beth Goldstein, an adjunct professor at Brandeis University's International Business School, who frequently brings up the show in her consulting class. "If there's a lesson on a recent Trump, it can become integrated in the whole learning opportunity." There's an entire management class at the University of Washington in Seattle that is devoted to the show, complete with an hourlong question and answer session with one of Trump's assistants. At Georgetown University, the accounting and finance faculty, who usually turn up their noses at other reality shows like "Survivor," are eagerly rehashing "Apprentice" episodes in the hallways and have even formed a pool to guess the winner. When "The Apprentice" finale airs tonight, it will be down to the final two: the Ivy League Kwame or self-made Bill. Both will duke it out to decide who wins the $250,000-a-year position as one of Trump's assistants. But the real lessons will be played out in classrooms during the coming weeks, as business professors dissect the winner to determine why he rose to the top. At Boston College's Carroll School of Management this week, professor Gregory Stoller launched into a discussion on the nuts and bolts of Massachusetts real estate law, laced with terms such as "lis pendens," "encumbrance," and "determination of applicability." Facing his entrepreneurial finance class, he paused a moment for effect. "How many people watch 'The Apprentice?' " he asked about two dozen students taking notes or typing on their laptops. He briefly recounted a recent episode in which one character used aggressive negotiating tactics to wrest an apartment he wanted away from the other team's leader. "He said, 'Whatever you want is what I want,' " Stoller said. "Is that unethical? Or is that just good business?" At the center of the classroom, a student in a collared shirt and glasses shot back, "It's nasty, but I think it's ethical." The lesson, the professor said later in the discussion, is that there's a "fine line" between aggressiveness and illegality. It's OK to be tough, he said, but boundaries should always be respected. "There's a fine line between being like Omarosa in 'The Apprentice' and respecting the boundaries," Stoller said, referring to the show's divisive character who has alternately shirked her work, argued with her teammates, or bungled the assignment altogether. "The Apprentice" works like an 15-part job interview. The candidates are divided into teams, then asked to complete various tasks. Members of the losing team have to come to Trump's boardroom, where one will be fired. During one early episode, Trump asked the teams to create an ad campaign for a private jet company. Immediately, the all-female team asked for a meeting with the company's executives. But the male team decided that they did not have enough time. While watching the episode at home, the Brandeis professor, Goldstein, found herself screaming at the doll-size men on her television set: "We don't need to talk to the client? He's going to get fired!" Her 8-year-old son looked at his mother and began to laugh. But within the hour, Trump had proven Goldstein's hunch correct, as he fired the team leader. The next week, Goldstein surveyed her Brandeis consulting class, asking why they thought the female group had won. She also asked them to weigh in on how they would have approached the situation differently. "There are some really valuable business lessons to be learned," Goldstein said. "They've made a lot of classic mistakes." The professors said "The Apprentice" will never take the place of textbooks or traditional case studies. But they argued that it can have a place alongside them. "We incorporate all kinds of events," said Roy Lewicki, a professor of management and human resources at Ohio State University, who has talked about a handful of Trump episodes in his classes. "This is no more or less relevant than any other materials." And at the University of Washington, about 80 undergraduates in the Management Lessons from "The Apprentice" class watch the show each week and come up with their own business plans for the tasks presented on television. Their final exam: A journal of real-life lessons that they learned from Trump. The lecturer, Laura Schildkraut, said the class provides perfect fodder for her course. "Everyone says, 'Oh, it's not realistic. You don't go out and sell lemonade,' " she said. "But the students are seeing some of their peers go through the job-interview process. I don't look at 'You're fired' as 'You're fired.' It's, 'You're not going to get the position with our company.' " In guessing the winner of tonight's finale, the business professors would like to think they hold a bit of an edge. The Georgetown professors, who plan to have drinks and watch the show, have a pool going to see whose business acumen is the best. "Do we have the inside track? The academic in me would love to say yes, but it's probably untrue," said Lee Pinkowitz, a Georgetown assistant professor of finance.
for the love of all that is holy, can we stop with the birth certificate crap. i dont like obama any more than anyone else, but this birther shit is annoying as hell.
Nutmeg, when the stars fade from their eyes, those professors will wake up embarrassed one day when they realize they've been wearing no clothes to class. Anyone who ever went to business school knows what passes for case studies. Trump's "reality" show ain't it, and most certainly not at the university level. Looks to me like the star-struck professors are a bit too lazy to prepare their own course material.
UPDATE: Ben Smith reports that the document released by Trump on Monday does not appear to be the potential presidential contender's official birth certificate. Officials told Politico's Maggie Haberman that if it were, it'd be marked with the seal of the Department of Health, as well as the signature of the city registrar, which do not appear on the image of the document posted on the Newsmax website. Officials said the city Health Department is the "sole issuing authority" of official birth certificates in New York, and that the document would clearly say so, and "city officials said it's not an official document."
This goes back to the question I have asked twice in this thread, which the birthers don't want to address. How do you know Trump's birth certificate is real and not fake? That's the larger question, IMO. With the advancement of digital counterfeiting, how do you know? If Obama produces something that looks like the real thing, there is no way the birthers will be satisfied. They will say it is fake, and they will demand that "their" experts examine it, and of course, just like courtroom whore expert witnesses for whomever hires them, they will say it is fake...even if it isn't. As far as Trump, he is scum, and it is true to form that a bag of gas like Trump would produce something phony.
Nah, Trump is not scum, he just knows, like Einstein did, that people are usually very stupid. He is a businessman, and business is war. Im going to go out on a limb here and say that the birthers are the best hope to get Obama outta there. The masses do not grasp the issues well, and Obama is a Kennedy and King like orator. In a debate, he will crush a less dynamic opponent on style points alone. He does not have to be right, he just has to look better than his opponent. Just as Kennedy did against Nixon. History shows that Nixon won that debate on substance. But Kennedy looked better, a lot better. The GOP knows this. Facing Obama on the opposite end of a podium will be a terror, and the moderators will favor the incumbent. The GOP will have to defeat Obama on the ground of his choosing. Trump is just trying to pry a hole in the small chink of armor that will be the dogfight of the next election.
I disagree with this. It's the worst way to get him out of there. The best way to get him out will be highlighting all his policies from the previous 4 years. Come on RCG, his own party does not even support his policies.
U started a thread called the hypocrisy of the left. The dems might think Obama is a str8 up loon. Guess who they will support will all the might they can muster in November? Again Mav, he was, to my amazement( well McCain shot himself in the foot), able to beat to clearly more experienced and seasoned candidates on oration alone. This fellow has a gift, and if the GOP comes out all Bob Dole like they are going to get bounced. That is all I am saying. Walter Mondale tried that, "just the facts ma'am" shtick too and had his head handed to him as well. The GOP had better have an angle other than "the facts".