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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.
