January 25, 2004

How much of "The Apprentice" is a set up? Consider this description of the first three installments, described by the NYT:
In the three episodes of "The Apprentice" that have been broadcast, the women's team has beat out the men's three times. And each time, the women have used their gender and good looks to get ahead. In order to sell lemonade, the women — all attractive and trim, and some scantily clad — rewarded customers with kisses. Their winning advertising campaign pitch for the jet company invoked phallic double entendres about nose cones and fan tails, which the women delivered wearing adorable flight attendant uniforms. In the most recent challenge, the women shamelessly flirted with a gold merchant in order to win a key discount.
I don't think the women are actually actresses, in on a joke, like the housemates on "The Joe Schmo Show," because you can find an old article verifying that Omarosa really did have a job of some kind in the Clinton White House, and because it seems unlikely that they wouldn't clue in the audience that the guys were being scammed, since knowing that would probably be thought to help us enjoy things. But I do suspect that the women, chosen in part for good looks, were encouraged to go all out using sexuality to win every contest, to produce a show where the men would lose again and again, challenging them to break down and begin complaining in amusing and politically incorrect ways.

Speaking of political correctness, what's with the locution "the women have used their gender"? The word "sexuality" is not fit to print?

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