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Margaret Carlson offers this:
...Martha Stewart emerges Friday from doing time at Alderson Federal Prison Camp more marketable than when she went in. The Old Martha was on cable (except for those occasional short segments paired with a Cuisinart on the third-rated “CBS Morning News”). The New Martha, who will be under house arrest for five months at her 153-acre Bedford, N.Y., estate, has escaped the ghetto of the high-numbered channels to breathe the clear air of the networks with two new shows, one of which is the only sanctioned spinoff of Donald Trump’s top 10 show, “The Apprentice.” She’s so hot, ankle bracelets could become stylish.
I’m all for ex-cons going on to lead fulfilling lives once they’ve paid their debt, but I do think they ought to start with a small show of remorse. Martha is having her comeback without even admitting what she did was wrong or apologizing to the poor schlubs who bought the stock she unloaded just before it tanked. At least drug recidivist Robert Downey Jr. pleaded for forgiveness before his comeback.
I disagree with Carlson. In my view Martha Stewart did nothing wrong. The thing she was accused of doing had never previously been considered a crime. Only people who worked for a company whose stock was traded had ever previously been considered possibly liable for insider trading. She did something that had been done for years, and the prosecutors decided after the fact to declare it illegal, in order to make a show of going after a successful business executive at a time when Enron-style scandals were in the news.
Additional previous Big Picture posts on the subject are here and here.
I think it’s brilliant that Stewart took her punishment in such good spirit. I’m proud that she didn’t admit to wrongdoing which she neither believed she had done, nor which many others such as myself believe she had done. I hope she comes out of this more successful than ever.
From Max Boot:
In 2003, more than a month before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote in the Weekly Standard that the forthcoming fall of Baghdad “may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history events like the storming of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall after which everything is different. If the occupation goes well (admittedly a big if), it may mark the moment when the powerful antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and began to transform the region for the better.”
At the time, this kind of talk was dismissed by pretty much everyone not employed by the White House as neocon nuttiness. Democracy in the Middle East? Introduced by way of Iraq? You’ve got to be kidding! The only real debate in sophisticated circles was whether those who talked of democracy were simply naive fools or whether their risible rhetoric was meant to hide some sinister motive.
Well, who’s the simpleton now? Those who dreamed of spreading democracy to the Arabs or those who denied that it could ever happen?
...”It’s strange for me to say it,” says Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who would never be mistaken for a Bush backer, “but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq.”
“Now with the new Bush administration,” confirms former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, “we feel a stronger determination in liberating Lebanon and in promoting democracy in the Middle East.”
Functional Ambivalent posts:
So, as a Democrat, I’m wondering: What do we do if President Bush was right? What do we do if the Mideastern dominoes start falling and President Bush goes down in history as Winston Churchill, while we go down as Neville Chamberlain, howling weakly that diplomacy works and military force is no longer necessary? What if our most conservative President goes down in history as a greta contributor to the liberal ideals of freedom and tolerance, while we Democrats—we liberals—go down as cold-hearted and fearful, unconcerned about the suffering of our fellows while we sit contentedly in our affluence?
Rock on!
Use the Force, Luke!
Read the whole thing. It’s an excellent analysis, and it shows that some on the Left are appreciating the current achievements of GWB in the Mid-East.
(via Pejmanesque. )
