I first met Donald Trump about 15 years ago. I didn’t meet his hair until a decade later. I have never told this story before because I thought it was awkward (and because it made me look bad). But now that even Donald is talking about his hairstyle on national TV, it’s time.
As I said, I met Trump back when I was working for another newspaper in town and needed a quick column. I decided to do one on how Trump put deals together. (Sounds like a book of his, doesn’t it?)
Now the hair.
I was attending a Knicks game about five years ago with my daughter, Megan. We had good seats (which means somebody gave them to us). Trump and a blonde (do I even have to say it was a woman or that she was great-looking?) walked about 30 rows in front of us to their courtside seats.
The woman was, as you’d expect from Trump, eye catching. But what really caught our attention was Donald’s hair.
It was orange – fittingly, sort of the color of a brand-new basketball.
“What the heck is with his hair?” Megan said.
I shrugged as I often do when my kids ask me the really tough questions or when I’m concentrating on something else – in this case, the blonde.
Maybe it’s the lighting down at those $1,000 seats, I thought.
We decided that it wasn’t worth climbing down to courtside to meet Trump. My daughter had recently met Derek Jeter, and one thrill per lifetime was enough.
A couple of weeks passed, and I happened to have a reason to be up at Trump’s offices. I wasn’t supposed to meet with him but the person I was visiting suggested I stop in and say hello to Donald.
So I did.
And, yes, even up close his hair was orange. It wasn’t the lights at the Garden after all. Trump and I exchanged niceties. He said I looked fatter than the last time we saw each other (which was true), and I said so did he (which was just as true).
And then – to my shock – I actually blurted out, “What’s with that hair?” It was one of those times when you want to grab the words in mid-flight and put them back in your mouth before the last syllable lands.
I had insulted a guy who had always been nice to me. He had always said he liked my column. And while I didn’t know him well enough to, say, be invited down to Atlantic City to judge a beauty contest – hint, hint – we had always been friendly.
The minute those words came out I felt like a real S.O.B.
But then Donald bailed me out.
As I remember it, he ran his fingers through his hair and said, “You know how it is, John. You get older, and the girls don’t like gray.”
Just think: What if my comment had been more direct? What if I, or someone else, had gotten Trump to change his hair years ago?
The whole country right now would have to concentrate on Iraq instead of Donald Trump’s coiffure.
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Get ready for action in the cable TV industry.
Merrill Lynch told clients that it expects a new round of cable industry consolidations.
Among them, even before scandal-plagued Adelphia gets out of bankruptcy, that company could go to the highest bidder, which is likely to be Comcast, Time Warner or Cox.
If Time Warner is the winning bidder, it might decide to merge its own cable operations into Adelphia, thus doing a back-door conversion of Time Warner Cable into a public company.
Cablevision, in the New York metropolitan area, and Bright House (Tampa/Orlando, Fla.) are also seen as takeover bait.