I was reading Rayne's discussion of Martha-bashing, and coincidentally the New Yorker arrived in the mail, with Jeffrey Toobin's article in it. Toobin surveys the legal case and decides that it's plausible, but not watertight. He also discusses the other ongoing case – her trial before the court of popular culture – and finds her, in part, a victim of envy and spite (Schadenfreude, if we're going to be fancy about it).
My two cents' worth? IMHO, whatever offense to the public good Martha Stewart may have committed is outweighed by her contributions. There have been far worse instances of malfeasance and it's ridiculous for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to be taking up time thinking of ways to punish a chef. I think the backlash is partly about men and women, partly about personality, partly about class. Remember Lester Burnham in American Beauty? How he rags on his wife for her matching garden shears and clogs? There's something similar going on here.
Behind the reactions of guys to what Martha Stewart represents is the fear that what one's girlfriends, spouses, or women in general really want is to live in mansions or restored farmhouses, entertaining a coterie of distinguished friends, and driving around, in a large suburban vehicle, to select quality ingredients for acts of gourmet cooking. Most guys don't have the capability to provide this kind of high-falutin' life, plus we're a bit lazy. Martha's perfectionism runs contrary to the ethic of slack. Living Martha-style doesn't leave a whole lot of time for football, a sport which takes up entire afternoons.
Plus, many if not most middle-class men have a seething resentment towards the "gentry" – that is, anyone who dares to assert superiority to us on the basis of birth, wealth, education, geographical habitat or taste. So this attraction of women towards Martha feels like a kind of betrayal. It's unmanning. It causes a mild version of the paranoia that afflicted the poet Delmore Schwartz, who was convinced his wife was conducting an affair with Nelson Rockefeller. It drove Schwartz nuts; he ended his days shuffling through porn magazines in a New York hotel.
Back to the personality issue. Martha's demeanor, on her TV show, is one of unflinching capability and professionalism. That competence, attention to detail, and business savvy triggers a contrarian impulse. It can't helped. Most of us aren't anywhere near her level of success, and her personality traits offer unwelcome evidence as to why that is. She's a daily reminder that we're shortsighted, sloppy and complacent. And we want to feel that shortsighted, sloppy and complacent is somehow right. More human. More something. More in the natural order of things, dammit!
8:20:38 PM 
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