Leave it to Martha Stewart to make doing time look like it was “a good thing.”
Only she could emerge from a correctional facility looking like she’d spent five months at Canyon Ranch instead of Camp Cupcake.
Only she could summon the kind of media frenzy that greeted her when she left Alderson prison shortly after midnight.
The way the 24/7 cable news networks covered her release, you’d have thought Chicago’s fictional lawyer Billy Flynn had abandoned Thelma Kelly and Roxie Hart for her. (“ImClone had it coming! It had it coming!”)
Nothing, not Syria and Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, not an ailing pope or the Social Security scare could pull news hounds from the big news of the day: Martha’s Moving Day!
As a crowd of admirers gathered, the cable news networks reported live. Shortly after midnight, Martha came out of the West Virginia institution looking like she were about to board the QEII instead of begin probation under house arrest over the next five months.
When she is fitted with her identification band, it will be as if it were encrusted with diamonds, not a microchip.
Some people expected her to snap under prison pressure, to have her uppity ways knocked down to size by other inmates. Not our Martha. Her way of getting knocked down to size was to lose inches and pounds.
You don’t build an empire like hers by good looks alone. Martha had going for her looks and smarts. She was also tough, a proven survivor.
Martha may have started out working as a fashion model but in the decades since then, she became a stockbroker who later turned catering into an art form and this art form into a business-school model. She survived divorce, back-stabbing friends and prison. Like Molly Brown, she’s nearly unsinkable.
Martha was looked up to by many women in business, even when she disappointed them by breaking the law (lying) about a business transaction that resulted in her incarceration last October. Her biggest business mistake was to lose her reputation over the $52,000 she made selling ImClone.
While at Alderson she picked dandelion greens to supplement prison fare. Life gave Martha lemons so she made – what else? – lemonade. Not with actual lemons, though. Martha couldn’t get them in prison. Besides her family and friends, Martha said she missed lemons most of all.
On the way to prison, she lost friends, namely those who testified against her at trial. But she also made new ones, including the woman who crocheted the poncho she was seen wearing when she left confinement.
Some friends not doing time are doing prime-time instead. Donald Trump, joined by Mark Burnett of “Survivor” fame, is backing a reality television show for Martha patterned after “The Apprentice.”
Just days out of prison and Martha was back on top of things. There is some buzz about a DVD venture.
She’s back. Back holding meetings at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. One staff meeting was open to the press. Unlike the Alderson outing, this media coverage was by her invitation.
White-collar criminals are said to have it easier, yet no time in prison passes quickly even if to observers of the rich and famous it appears that they have it made. Disparate sentencing still exists and is often influenced by gender, race and class. Yet, Martha, white and wealthy, has done half her time for her petty crime. She’ll have all this behind her before Ken Lay’s defense rests.
That said, she remains one of the richest women in America. Her face appears on the cover of a special issue of Forbes magazine as one of “The World’s Richest People.”
Not too shabby for an ex-con.
For almost half a year, the corporate scheduler who had shared her calendar with the world in her Living magazine had lost control over her time. The businesswoman for whom communications was a crutch was without a Palm Pilot, fax, copier, cell phone or PC.
Although she gave up some control of her empire, it did not crumble without her. In fact, it appeared to be doing better than expected in the hands of an eerie identical twin, CEO Susan Lyne.
But where Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia stock more than doubled after Martha’s sentencing last July, the company recently reported record losses. Earlier this month it reported a $60 million loss in 2004. The company’s stock continued to fall even after Martha returned. Not a good thing.
Martha may be coming home just when her company needs her, not some look-alike. Attention Sue Lyne, there can be only one Martha Stewart.
Rhonda Chriss Lokeman is a columnist for the Kansas City Star.
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