Category: Celebrity Rand Fans

We noted several months ago that Trump’s first apprentice, Bill Rancic, was reading The Fountainhead. But now we’ve learned that Trump’s newest apprentice, Kelly Perdew, is a bona-fide fan of the novel.
From an article in the New York Sun:

About 17 million Americans watched Thursday night as Donald Trump chose his next “apprentice” in a three-hour television special on NBC. And even that number – more Americans than bought Bill Clinton’s memoir or saw Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” in theaters – probably understates the significance of the television program.
Thursday’s show featured a “studio” audience in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, a destination spot for high culture that was taken over for the evening by Mr. Trump and his would-be apprentices. NBC’s corporate parent, General Electric, is one of America’s largest companies. And the program is particularly popular among the younger demographic that will influence America’s future.
So what was all the fuss about? Viewers saw Mr. Trump hire Kelly Perdew, who triumphed over the 17 other candidates in the course of the season-long reality television show. And who is Mr. Perdew? A West Point graduate who completed the Army’s ranger training and, according to the “Apprentice” Web site, served two years as a military intelligence officer.
“My military experience will really help me,” Mr. Perdew told Entertainment Weekly.
In promotional material on the show’s Web site, Mr. Perdew says that if he had a super power he would use it to “help the thousands of brave Americans putting their lives on the line to protect our freedom.” He lists “The Fountainhead,” a libertarian tract by Ayn Rand, as among his favorite books.

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Carlos Garcia is owner of Kira, Inc., a construction management and maintenance company serving military facilities throughout the United States. The article “Ace of Base” in Boulder’s Daily Camera provides an inspiring profile of Garcia:

Though he owns homes in both Boulder and Miami, has a Picasso hanging in his den and is constantly crisscrossing the country on planes, Carlos Garcia dismisses the notion that he leads a glamorous life.
“I don’t know of any other Columbia MBAs who unclog toilets on military bases,” Garcia said. […]
A native of Cuba, Garcia was only three months old when his family fled the country after the government took over his father’s sugar farm. He lived with his mother and two sisters in the Bahamas until he moved to Pennsylvania to attend college. In a time when criticism of government and foreign policy is common, Garcia remains thankful for the opportunities afforded in a free society.
“Anyone who was born in a Communist country and had members of their family killed is going to spend a lot more time being grateful to this country rather than criticizing it,” he said. “This is the greatest country in the world.”
The name of his company comes from a character in Ayn Rand’s novel, “We the Living.” Garcia identifies with its heroine, a woman engineer who struggles to escape from Communist Russia to America. Like Rand, Garcia believes there is much to appreciate about America.
“I am definitely an optimist,” Garcia said. “I see the beauty in life and try to appreciate it as I can.”
While freedom and individuality rule his personal philosophy, hard work and quality are equally vital when it comes to Garcia’s business doctrine. His drive for excellence is well known to those who work around him.

See the full article (registration required) for additional information about this highly successful fan of Ayn Rand’s novels.

According to an article that originally ran in the Press Telegram (now reprinted here), Los Angeles Dodgers General Manager Paul DePodesta is a serious fan of Ayn Rand’s writings:

During an hour-long interview, Paul DePodesta mentions convictions often, and reveals the famous novelist, Ayn Rand, and the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, as individuals who have had influences on his life.
“I have DVDs on Ayn Rand and have read most of her books,” he says of the author whose most acclaimed book, “The Fountainhead,” stressed the virtue of American individualism. “Howard Roark (the main character in ‘The Fountainhead’) was a guy loyal to his own ideals and principles and he eventually triumphs over every form of spiritual collectivism. He had big…” [Quote cut in the original, for some reason. –JZ]
DePodesta also has a printout on his desk of a quote from Theodore Roosevelt in regard to criticism.
He admits it serves as a source of inspiration for him, and he reads it to me verbatim:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

See the full article for additional information about the celebrity Ayn Rand fan.