http://blogs.salon.com/0001549/ Rayne hit a nerve with her "Martha" rant on 1.29.03. And, as usual I am out of the loop. So I'll keep this brief. That's because 1. Everything that can be said has been said by Rayne, and debated in the many thoughtful, and often heated comments, on the piece. 2. I am trying to do a "link" again, God help me.
Remember the story in Peter's Principles about the boardroom full of upper management guys who spent two minutes on whether to merge with another company and make a two billion profit (or something like that?), but spent two hours arguing about the need for an outhouse on farmland the company owned? There's your Martha thing, IMO.
The vicious behavior of Corporation heads and CEO's is too much for anyone to wrap his brains around. There were so many of them, and their crimes were so heinous that nobody want to research, write a tome about it, or argue the case. But a lone blonde female, head of her own company, well, now, that's a different story. A story with legs. (If you will excuse the double entendre) Journalists know instinctively that it's always more fascinating, easier, more attention grabbing to focus on the particular, rather than the general.
Bringing down the rare self-made billion dollar woman in business is more interesting than that bald guy with the rimless glasses and the wife in Larchmont, who put 2,000 people out of work, embezzled the life savings of another couple of thousand, and so forth. A ho hummer, that's for shure.
