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Pam's Rant on the Martha Stewart Case
[Posted 21 January 2006]

To follow is the first rant I posted on my web site. It dealt with Martha Stewart, the first person prosecuted in the great ocean of people committing the same crimes or worse at the time. (Even President George Duh-bya Bush has bailed out of investments at critical times in the past, with obvious insider information -- of course escaping prosecution.) At the time my rant on Martha was written, it also seemed as though she would be the ONLY person prosecuted in the midst of numerous corruption scandals, several of Enron proportions.

Tomorrow this rant will be one year old, and obviously a lot has happened in that year. Ken Lay will be facing prosecution soon, amazingly. And a few people have already been convicted (although others have walked, for no logical reason). Martha has already served her jail time, and is seen as something of a folk hero for doing so. And so it appears as though some in the government are still willing to enforce at least a minimum of business law. I find this surprising, to be honest, in the midst of widespread corruption and corporate looting. Now the big question is -- will Ken Lay walk, or serve at least as much time as Martha?


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[Posted 22 January 2004] Yeah, I'm a cookbook author, but that doesn't mean I like Martha Stewart. Normally I'm at work during her show, but flashing back to 1998, I worked a shift in Miami that started later in the day. Somewhere between 1st and 2nd shift. I'd often flip through the channels looking for something to leave on TV while I did housework and dressed for work, and often Martha Stewart was the only thing on. Not because she's that good, just everything else was even worse.

Not that Martha Stewart's bad at cooking, decorating, arts & crafts, or anything else. She has a whole staff to make sure she's really good at those things. It's just that most of her dishes didn't fit the whole foods, vegan, healthy oils, etc. type of eating that I try to follow. In other words, she's not a health food crowd type of girl. I also am OK with watching arts & crafts once in awhile, but not very often. I like more substance to the media I watch, read, or listen to. So in a nutshell, Martha was just a tad too boring for me. I wasn't interested in what she was cooking, wasn't healthy enough. Didn't want to see her decorating, wasn't important enough. Didn't want to give her the time of day, had higher priorities. Her show was supposedly very popular, just not with me.

Just wanted to give you that background before I start complaining about the criminal charges against Martha Stewart. Just so you understand I'm not a Martha Stewart fan, not even slightly. I just think that Martha was singled out for prosecution because she was the "wrong" gender and supported the "wrong" political party. You'll notice that good ole "Kenny boy" isn't facing any charges. In fact, hardly anyone from Enron, Arthur Andersen, Worldcom, or any of the other big scandals coming from the Bush contributors' crowd have been touched at all. And the money they absconded with makes Martha's stop order look like pocket change. Not that what Martha did was ethical, possibly not even legal (although that's up to the jury to decide). And she'll probably get off anyway because she's a celebrity and her crimes were just white collar financial issues. But why Martha and not Ken Lay? That's what I want to know. Rhetorically that is, since it's pretty obvious why. That's all. Not sticking with her because she's a cooking celebrity. It's just more politically-motivated prosecution coming from the right-wing fanatics in power right now. END OF RANT.


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