What I thought of immediately on reading this story was when I was looking a couple of years ago for temp help on Taskrabbit. I was looking for help scanning mass quantities of documents, bookkeeping type things, computer help, moving things, etc. It seemed like every person I clicked who offered to do what I was looking for was also interested in doing "event planning." I thought: well, whatever the heck people here think "event planning" is, it's clear that its the hottest job around. Later I got a better bead on that whole thing, checking out Meetup.com, seeing how people were making money off organizing meet ups.)

Melania's friend really did hit the jackpot.

And yes, the Trumpco way of doing this is very like the Sopranos. You wash my hand, I wash yours. But it is also very like the whole ethos of the Apprentice series, at least the few I've seen. The new service economy has at it height: get a rich person to like you, work to stroke their ego, and get rich yourself!

Then it struck me that this is also in the Stormy Daniels story, if you've bothered to read the whole interview, I have. They clicked on a personality level as well as the original reason and he wanted to help her in business.

So less like graft and more like prostitution? 

Another interesting thing was how she's working now for Melania unpaid. So it works like this: sometimes you get your big payoff all at once, but after that, you are stuck with the boss fuhever, loyalty expected. That is like the Sopranos.

All I know is: in Manhattan, and those who wanna be Manhattan-ites everyone is striving to be an "event planner", which is also called "curating" an event. Everyone thinks they can do P.R. better than everyone else. And that there is some rich person out there who you can snag to pay for it all to stroke their ego, interpret their vision. So like, the pre-presidential Donald would be both the ideal client and the nightmare client. I think of Ivanka, and think: she's still doing the p.r., event planner service thing, not the hirer thing.

The progenitor as I see it: the political blogosphere proved everyone can be a better spinmeister than those guys who get paid on TV.