Oma-achinhead

As the series has played out and Omarosa has acted like, well, Omarosa, flower_goddess remarked "I wonder what Omarosa is thinking now that she can see what a total bitch she is." Leaving aside the idea that calling her a bitch is too easy and that she is instead an asshole, I replied: "She'll blame it on selective editing. She won't see what everybody else sees - people like that never do." This is, of course, another reference to what is rapidly becoming my favorite psychological study:

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

You always run the risk of breaking your arm when you pat yourself on the back, but that's a chance I'm willing to take, because I called it:

"I was crucified because I was mature and professional," says the 30-year-old Omarosa, whom Trump fired in the show's ninth week. "There were people backstabbing, lying, sleeping with..." She cuts herself off. "And I became the villain. It's quite puzzling."
--People, 29 March 2004, p. 101

My first thought: I think it's puzzling only to her. My second thought: she worked on algore's staff (we think). Surely she at least has a passing familiarity with backstabbing. My third thought: sure, editing can show you in a bad light. But it can't make up something you didn't do, like playing basketball mere hours after deciding she was hurt too bad by a piece of falling plaster to help renovate the apartment her team had to rent out.

And about that alleged concussion:

"Even though I was walking around with a concussion and taking strong pain medication, I was still functioning 100 percent better than my colleagues".

A doctor looked at her and said 'no concussion.' The ER wouldn't see her - so she didn't qualify as a neuro exam candidate. So where did she get the 'strong pain medication?' On the other hand, claiming that she was still functioning 100 percent better than her colleagues is probably evidence that she wasn't thinking clearly after all. Or maybe she was just plain incompetent (from the APA study):

This study also supported Prediction 3, that incompetent individuals fail to gain insight into their own incompetence by observing the behavior of other people. Despite seeing the superior performances of their peers, bottom-quartile participants continued to hold the mistaken impression that they had performed just fine.

Omarosa did have one good point, though, although you need to get over the fact that her entire hand was composed of race cards to see it. Back to People:

She thinks racist stereotypes influenced the way she's depicted: "In 10 years of reality shows [10 years? Survivor:Borneo aired in the summer of 2000!], close to every African American woman is portrayed as hostile, aggressive, defensive."

Well, the NFL wives weren't too bad in TAR 4, but the next three black women I can remember on reality TV certainly weren't sterling examples of sisterhood: Earth Mother Linda from Survivor:Africa and uptight Bible-thumper JoAnna from Survivor:Amazon certainly fit Omarosa's characterization as 'hostile, aggressive, defensive'. Even Vecepia, who won Survivor:Marquesas, was one of only two former winners not invited to be on All-Star (used-car salesman sleazebag Brian, who won Thailand, being the other (and talk about cliches coming to life there)), but I think in that case it was a total lack of personality that prompted her snub. [You may or may not also count Osten from Survivor:Pearl Island, the first person ever to quit Survivor, as a big ol' girl.] since I have to think that thousands of black women apply for these reality shows; surely Burnett et. al would be able to find one who would be ratings-friendly in a positive sense.

Omarosa brought nothing but strife to whatever team she was working with, and I really don't remember her contributing anything of substance except continuous mispronounciations of Isaac Mizrahi's name. It's "mizz-RAH-hee." Please make a note of it.

flower_goddess and I did a happy dance when she got fired.