Leave Martha Be!
by Karen Williams - Oviedo Voice - March 11, 2004
An open plea to the judicial system of New York: Please let Martha Stewart alone!
I don’t care if she engaged in insider trading, outsider trading, or upside-downer trading. I don’t give a rip that she will tastefully decorate any prison to which she is sent. I want her acquitted. I want her
exonerated. I want her busy making TV shows, magazines, Kmart linens, and broiled pheasant with mint and mulberry wine sauce.
Why-oh-why, one might ask, would a woman such as myself, who barely knows how to turn on an oven and thinks a glue-gun is a weapon of some sort, care about the fate of Martha - this icon of domestic know-how? I haven’t watched her TV show since she waxed a little too ecstatic over bonsai trees, and I hurriedly trashed her magazine after I saw it contained the “s”-word (“sewing”). Why would I, a clueless soul who has never tackled a craft project that didn’t involve popsicle sticks, have any interest in this woman’s future?
Because I need someone to, uh, strongly dislike, that’s why. And Martha, like almost no one else, has all the qualifications.
She’s rich. She’s successful. She owns homes in Connecticut, New York, Maine, and probably Shangri-la. She takes fancy vacations in places that don’t require touring a time-share resort. She looks darn great for 62. AND she knows how to do every single, solitary thing that anyone could dream up to do in a kitchen - with skill, efficiency, and without getting pudgy from licking the bowls and gorging on the leftovers.
Gosh, I intensely dislike her. A picture of her Diane Sawyer-ish face with that flirty piece of blonde hair hanging in her eyes - oh, that would fit wonderfully on my dartboard.
If Martha becomes only a bygone sty in the public eye, I’ll have to find another TV diva to envy. Oprah? Mega-successful, mega-rich, and has Steadman tucked away. Next best candidate. Judge Judy? She’s smart, sassy, and looks a little too snazzy in that robe with a lace collar. Definitely a contender. Kelly Ripa of “Live with Regis and Kelly” daytime talkshow fame? Beautiful, funny, has three kids, does tons of TV, and looks fabulous at 9:00 a.m. every dang day. Yes, a front-runner.
But somehow there’s no one I love to loathe as much as Martha Stewart - someone who fell into fame, fortune, and an entrepreneurial empire by baking a mean chocolate cake and being able to demonstrate the process for the folks in TV land.
Please, Your Honor! Don’t send Martha away! Angry, miserable wretches everywhere - we whose nearest brush with cooking is opening a Taco Bell wrapper and best attempt at decorating is throwing out the pizza boxes - we need her!
Copyright 2004, Karen Williams
