PR for People Monthly December 2014 | Page 25

Finding time for both

Ione notes a strong parallel between working in healthcare and the hospitality industry. Both fields demand infinite patience, strong people skills and being anticipatory of people’s needs.

What’s next for Ione LeBlanc? As a licensed practical nurse (LPN), she is currently employed in two very different disciplines of nursing. One facility in midtown Manhattan is dedicated to women’s health – specifically, infertility. The second facility is a nursing home catering to the geriatric population.

In spite of her hectic schedule, she also manages to not only continue freelancing in the catering industry, but also advance her nursing career by currently pursuing of a second bachelor’s degree in nursing.

“I truly love vacillating between the hospitality and healthcare industries,” Ione said of her adventuresome life. “The similarities among the two can be maneuvered into a win/win combination. Patients want a healthcare professional that can show some empathy and advocate, so that a rapport of trust can be established. Clients and guests want to have a great time by having their needs met at any given event. In both industries my role is to offer a level of comfort to everyone I encounter. Once a rapport is established, it can be a most enjoyable exchange.”

Ione has also experienced that living in New York City makes everyone an entrepreneur. “In NYC,” she said, “anyone can do or be anything, thus making no one’s journey like your own.”

The self-proclaimed French public intellectual Bernard-Henry Lévy, who was born into great wealth, once reportedly said, “I knew when I was 20 that I’d never have to suck up to anyone.”

He often associates himself with other notable men, such as Charles Baudelaire, Andre Malraux and T.E. Lawrence. Anointing himself the successor to Alexis de Tocqueville, Bernard-Henry Lévy toured America as if it were a freak show. The result became his book American Vertigo, where he spends a great deal of time interviewing drag queens and lap dancers as if they are the bedrock of American culture. As always, Lévy is known for being short on the facts, long on bombastic puffery.

Being wealthy and a self-proclaimed public intellectual is a big cross to bear for someone who might just be an average guy. While Lévy fancies himself an erudite thinker in the same vein as Victor Hugo or Emile Zola, his tireless social antics make him cheap fodder for the gossip columnists on both sides of the Atlantic. He once boasted that his sexual prowess makes him take as many partners as possible in one night. He’d attend a dinner party with one woman only to end up in bed with another woman that evening, and, by morning he’d visit the bed of still another woman. You know what they say about a man who brags about his sexual escapades? It usually means something is quite small, but it’s probably not his ego.

In an attempt at being iconic, Lévy brands himself with his initials of BHL and claims to be known everywhere far beyond his native country of France. He frequently compares himself as charismatic as Jesus Christ and sports crisp, white shirts and an immaculately groomed gray mane that is clear evidence of a legion of on-call stylists, makeup artists and wardrobe professionals.

There is a French term that quite succinctly captures this sort of person: poseur. And money can buy a whole lot of pontification, preening and punditry, also known as publicité.

Bernard-Henri Lévy:

The People’s Pig

The man who “sucks up to no one” is a master at creating his own unearned publicité

By Patricia Vaccarino