Martha My Dearest

Last night NBC broadcast "Martha, Inc," a television movie based on a rather nasty book on the life and career of Martha Stewart, with Cybill Shepherd in the title role and Tim Matheson as her hapless (now former) husband. What an event! The movie did a pretty thorough job of exposing Madame Stewart as the conniving bitch she is, depicting in almost graphic detail how she manipulated people to get her own way, and how she lied and schemed into turning her Westport, Connecticut catering service into the domesticity empire of magazines, television specials, and books she controls today. The movie makes it clear that she has a history of dubious dealings in the stock market, showing how as a stockbroker Madame Stewart pushed stock in a furniture chain store that tried to cook their books in violation of stock exchange rules.

Oh yeah, Cybill Shepherd's performance: Brilliant! She didn't just imitate Martha Stewart (in fact, she didn't say "It's a good thing" once!), she became Martha Stewart! I like Cybill Shepherd, and here she was making me seethe with anger at her - just like Martha Stewart! Cybill deserves an Emmy for this star turn.

I wonder, though; if someone named Martin Stewart had clawed his way to the top of the home improvement industry with how-to books, a weekly television program, and a Martin Stewart line of power tools at Sears, if he had been a bastard on his way to the top, and had been caught dabbling in insider trading, would we care if he did anything wrong? Somehow, I doubt we'd give a man the same nasty response from the public for acting the way Martha Stewart acted. And yet, those are exactly the kind of men who run corporate America.

Face it. All businesspeople are horrible. Even the good ones. But what makes Martha Stewart so insufferable is that she got to where she is by offering advice and tips on stupid homemaking ideas like turning coconut shells into planters or making fertilizer out of used coffee grinds. Who cares? Not a good thing.