Words for My Enjoyment

Kate Lee Wants To Be Your Friend

May 26th, 2004

Little Katey Lee. None of her friends would have ever thought that someday she would be the subject of an article in the New Yorker. Then again, none of Kate’s family ever thought she would end up getting publicity in the New Yorker for being a twenty-seven year old assistant at ICM either. (For those who love Cliff Notes and don’t like to click links to other articles, the article basically highlights how this agency assistant is scouring blogs on a daily basis and hooking up blog writers with book deals based on their online talent.)

A twenty-seven year old assistant? At International Creative Management?

That’s the problem with agencies. If Kathy Lee Gifford was the head of one of the big four agencies (ICM, UTA, William Morris Agency and CAA) you can bet your bippy that the conservative news channels would so be on her ass about paying her staff well-below the average survival salary that people need to live.

Trust me when I tell you that I know people. Seriously, I do. Real living breathing people who have taken jobs at the “big four” agencies and have their starting weekly salaries at like $300 bucks a week. (We’ll talk later about the fact that people tell you that if you put the dollar-sign before a number, that should assume it means dollars… I.e., $300 is three-hundred dollars, so you don’t have to write out “dollars” after it, which I just think is an inane argument, but who am I to argue about that in the middle of a paragraph about Kathie Lee Gifford.)

Nevetheless, that $300 dollars a week is for a 60+ hour week making calls for your boss and picking up their cleaning and being there before they arrive and after they leave and rolling calls and ordering lunch and making reservations and it’s like the worst hazing ever in the professional world but is obviously the only way to the top of the wonderful world of agents where you work for others’ and their careers for a paltry 10% percent (I’ll get into the, “Does the % sign actually refer to the word percent or do you have to add it”, at a later date as well.).

As for Kate Lee, she’s obviously a go-getter.

Still an assistant and she’s already got an article written about her in The New Yorker. If her boss is the kind of boss traditionally a boss at a big-four agency, I’ll bet you a hundred bucks that she’s none too pleased that her “assistant” is being written up in The New Yorker.

I could be wrong. But then, that would be just silly.

Moral of this post: Kate Lee is famous now. She is still an assistant. Her family is proud of her and her friends are jealous. Her boss wants to fire her but she can’t find a valid reason that would hold up in court. As for the rest of the agency assistants, they work for peanuts in the hopes that they will someday find that “diamond in the rough” who will make them famous and rich as well.

Second Moral of this post: Placing a dollar sign or a percentage sign in a sentence does not necessarily mean you can’t write out the word “dollars” or “percent” after the said placed symbol that precedes it.

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In other news, I have another new column up at Hollywoodlog today.

Posted under Blogging, Books, Kate Lee. |