By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 5, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
Her main claim to fame was her seasonal appearance on Donald Trump’s Shark Tank-like entrepreneurial head-start television show called The Apprentice. I never fully watched any single episode of the show, and so I cannot sincerely claim to have comprehensively followed the detailed contours of her notoriously brash conduct on the same. On the few occasions that I watched it, it was at the prodding of my brother-in-law, Dr. Kwame Nyanor Amoh, who seemed to be riveted by this urbane and debonair bloke with our first name, Kwame, who readily came off as the show’s cynosure, or audience magnet, at least in the episodes in which Kwame appeared.
His distinctively polished Ghanaian manners drew a sharp contrast between him and the stereotypically rude and publicly embarrassing manners of the proverbial average Nigerian. On the show, the decidedly unladylike Omarosa Manigault easily came off as brash and uncomfortably aggressive. She obviously seemed to be out of her league, in the practical sense of the fact that she disturbingly lacked the highly prized skills of a team player – she did not seem to get along with any of her teammates, which contributed in no mean measure to the fact that her team would painfully lose out to another that clearly appeared to be composed of far less talented young prospective entrepreneurs and business moguls but was, nevertheless, more collaboratively cohesive than Omarosa’s group.
Actually, Kwame was the leader of Omarosa’s team; he looked poised and charming and generously endowed with the requisite leadership skills. Omarosa, on the other hand, appeared to have been thrown into the mix like a monkey wrench. And to be certain, she did not disappoint. Undoubtedly, it is the notoriety gained from the Trump show that has commended her into plum gigs in the mainstream of television news talking-heads programs. News analyses programs, I mean. Which also makes it quite natural and logical that Ms. Manigault would support the oversized presidential ambitions of Mr. Trump, her equally brash and boorish former boss and the man who made her the patent media nuisance that she veritably is today.
Well, where this column comes in regards the recent predictable arrest of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign manager, Mr. Corey Lewandowski, who has been charged with grabbing and shoving a popular network-television news reporter. His arrest was predictable because Mr. Lewandowski’s churlish conduct strikingly mirrors that of his violence-preaching billionaire real-estate developer paymaster. On the campaign trail, Trump has been seen and heard many times urging his fanatical supporters to punch anti-Trump protesters who appear at his rallies in the face and not worry about the legal consequences, because “I will pay for an attorney to defend you.”
Now, it refreshingly looks as if Omarosa is fast coming to grips with the reality. She recently called for Donald Trump to fire his campaign manager. But this is not because of Mr. Lewandowski’s widely publicized violent behavior (See “Omarosa Manigault Says Donald Trump Might Have to Tell Corey Lewandowski, ‘You’re Fired’” FirstDraft New York Times 3/29/16). Rather, Ms. Manigault’s call and prediction of Mr. Lewandowski’s shortly getting fired by Mr. Trump is squarely predicated on the near-certain possibility of the white supremacists’ candidate of choice’s losing Wisconsin’s Republican presidential primary by the close of today. This is typical Omarosa, of course.
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
