Last Summer you couldn't read a magazine or catch the evening news without seeing images of the doyenne of all things domestic, Martha Stewart, and hearing about her remote connection to a stock scandal. For months she was the daily media meal ticket for everyone from newsprint to networks ( they even confronted her once on CBS morning cooking segment ) .
The government made great public play that they were notifying her of their intention to consider prosecuting her. They demanded records from her stock broker and her private files. They chose to allege that Stewart lied when she said she had a stop order on her ImClone stock. My roommate is sharp enough to issue them for her few stocks and Martha is no dunce. But political cartoons from the Orlando Sentinel to Doonesbury anticipated a convicted Martha redecorating jail cells. Then as the Afghan/bin Laden chase wore down and Saddam became increasingly a target, Martha's mess faded into the background.
Stewart broke her self-imposed silence on Superbowl Sunday and declared not only had she done no wrong, but her public prosecution in the press cost her ventures more than $400 million. The tag line to the reports was that the government hadn't decided whether it had enough of a case to prosecute her as yet. If they hadn't been able to mount a case in these many months, then what was all the fuss about?
As a kid I wanted to be a magician. I learned early that snappy patter and misdirection was the way to distract the public from the trick up my sleeve. So I wondered what was behind the Martha business.
One fairly obvious conclusion was that Stewart was part of a smokescreen blown up to mask the Enron mess. The average person today can't tell you the name of any of the CEOs involved in last year's debacles, but they all remember Martha Stewart. The Stewart charges aired just as Congressional investigators were questioning Enron's connection to the Bush administration's energy policy and demanding data on who VP Dick Cheney had consulted in its formulation. ( Very quietly, sometime later, Cheney refused to turn over related documents. ) Concurrently, investigators were looking into Cheney and Bush's connection to Halliburton Industries amid allegations of accounting irregularities.
But why Martha Stewart? Here was a woman that should have been the darling of the 'family values' folks. All for home decor and domesticity. Why serve her up as a sacrifice? Was it merely to distract the home front from the administration's corporate connections and the 'wag the dog' scenario that was playing out since 9-11? Was there some more subtle thrust to the Martha message? Here was a woman who had worked as a Polish maid to put herself through one of the seven sister colleges, had married, hatched a daughter, and started a catering business to support them both when the marriage fell through.
In her early cookbooks Stewart is shown with a suburban flip hairdo and frilly apron, a Mrs. Clever clone, making home comfy for her offstage mate. But she shed that drag and dressed in the garb of a harried homemaker and single mother—slacks, a rolled-up long sleeved shirt, and her signature strand of hair falling into her eyes. As a businesswoman she was astute and her fiefdom grew at an accelerated rate. But Martha no longer looked like someone Phyllis Schafley or Laura Bush would invite to tea. She was too 'butch' for Betty Crocker. She survived the many parodies of herself with good humor.
Her syndicated TV show Martha Stewart Living featured an inordinate number of gays among her crop of guest designers, antique dealers, restorers, wholesalers, retailers, craftspeople, garden experts, hair stylists and cooks. The Martha Stewart signature line had almost single-handedly saved K-Mart from going under when they first talked bankruptcy in 2001 ( and capped their sales in 2002 ) .
Maybe the magic misdirection was at the behest of other mega-mart shareholders fearful of the threatened competition during the predicted dismal holiday sales season. Stewart was to introduce a new line of furniture bearing her name when the allegations were announced.
To top it off, when challenged she hadn't broken down in hysterics or tears. She kept her own counsel and waited for the other shoe to fall. The government had to play pick-up sticks and go on a fishing expedition. To many women in America the challenge to the status quo from this 'uppity woman' was seen for what it was. Male correspondents made light of her dilemma in cartoons and comedy shows. Even Tom Joyner and his male cohorts, still laughing after the Sunday press release, were brought to task by the women on his morning radio show. Martha Stewart has defied more than the odds by achieving her success, she has defied convention, and that has made her a target.
Copyright 2003, by Marie J. Kuda
e-mail: kudoschgo@aol.com
