Martha the Martyr . . .

[frankly_fedup2]

Her only comments stated (not verbatim), "Today is a shameful day for me family, myself, and my BELOVED COMPANY. She said she was

I think I would have said "MY BELOVED COMPANY."

Ahh, She tells people to still buy her magazines, asking people to buy from her beloved company, and that is how they can support her while she is in "club fed."

I just cannot find it in myself to show compassion for a person who is a billionaire, lied about her friendship with the owner of Imlcone, and is plugging her business in her only statement

[Booster]

1. If you put yourself in her shoes,

how would you have handled it differently?

[ronabop]

45. How about:

Not lying.

There's a start.

Then, I wouldn't have lied about lying.

-Bop

[Wilber_Stool]

2. I think a lot of opinions about Martha

will change after Ken Lay walks.

[Misunderestimator]

3. So, she shouldn't try to undo whatever damage she caused to her

company or all its employees?? I'm not quite getting your logic. She wasn't asking them to support her, she was trying to get those who support her to support the company. (I think she has plenty of money already and isn't looking for handouts here for herself.)

[NJCher]

4. Martha is indeed a martyr

I can forgive her sales pitch due to the fact that she's paid in the multi-, multi-millions for something very minor the government decided to feed into an amplifier. I think it would be very difficult to see something I'd worked so hard on turned into a fraction of its original worth.

In fact, I'm stopping by K-Mart today to treat myself to a Martha product, whatever that might be.


Cher

[asjr]

7. I will buy Martha Stewart products any time I wish. I hope

others will also. Ken Lay will get off scotfree. This has been a show trial. People in her company will lose their jobs. Even her magazine, as the media tells us, has lost readership. I will continue to buy it as long as it is published. It is one of the best.

[Cleita]

28. I just bought some nice bath towels that are Martha's brand

today at K-Mart.

[shawcomm]

5. You can't find compassion

for a person convicted of lying to an investigator while not under oath and without counsel at the time?

She wasn't even charged with the main accusations of insider trading.

[displacedtexan]

8. Well said, shawcomm!

She was charged with "novel" crimes: http://tinyurl.com/3ze6n

[Booster]

13. This is something I keep asking people to repeat to

themselves over and over again. Martha was convicted for lying about a crime that she wasn't charged with. Where is the outrage for such a thing?

[ronabop]

46. Okay....

You're charged with petty theft. To get out of jail, you say you were an eyewitness to a murder. You didn't lie about your own crime, they still die.

It's all good, right?

-Bop

[GreenPartyVoter]

16. She used to be a stock broker, so she knew what she was doing.

[BillZBubb]

23. So friggin what!?

She was NOT an Imclone insider. She had NO firsthand information about Imclone finances or business activity. She did NOT solicit the information that came her way. Her broker called her.

The broker called and said the Imclone CEO's family members were dropping shares. If you were in her shoes what would you have done? I have gotten similar broker calls in the past. I did not know whether what the broker was saying was true or not, he might have just been trying to get some trading commissions. If you have a broker you trust, you take his advice. That's what she did, for what to her was a paltry sum. She only sold a SMALL PORTION of her Imclone shares. Having been a broker she probably felt like throwing the guy a little business.

One juror lied about his criminal past. A chief witness against her perjured himself and is going to be tried for that. The supposed lie she told was made in an interview that was NOT recorded and the agent making the charge didn't even have contemporaneous notes. She was charged with BULLSHIT offenses and NOT insider trading.

Oh, gosh, but she was once a stockbroker!

[shawcomm]

25. The other thing I was thinking...

Those people who bought the shares she dumped - they may have made money since the drug that this was centered around finally got approved. Does anyone know what the stock price was when she rid herself of them, and what is became after the approval. I wonder if anyone lost money at all, or maybe made money.

But, that's beside the point. I agree Martha was on shaky ground with her trades, but the prosecution and media are saying it wasn't merely a lie, but obstruction of justice. My question is, obstruction of justice of what? Nothing was charged, so how could it be obstructed?

[frankly_fedup2]

51. That was my point exactly. I obviously needed to proof read

what I posted; however, it looks like you all picked up on what I meant.

I was just saying that the first statement she makes after her sentencing, she puts her "beloved" company over her own family. Now this sounds like the Martha that people claim she is. Not the new "softer" Martha that her PR people are trying to get out there.

Martha Stewart was afraid of losing a couple hundred thousand dollars. This woman WAS a billionaire when this happened. As for her "beloved" company, her actions are what has caused her company to lose 200+ peoples' jobs.

If she had not started out her career as a stock broker on the Exchange floor itself, one could say she was ignorant to the illegality of what she did. However, she knew exactly what she was doing, and her own GREED has almost brought the down fall of her company.

Yesterday when she was speaking, she was basically telling people to keep buying the magazines, products, etc. I did not think that was the appropriate time for such advertisement. But that is just my opinion.

I will admit, however, that being a successful woman was against her as well as being a donor to the Democratic Party. I am not completely ignorant as to how our justice system works in a man's world.

I do have one question if anyone knows. Didn't Martha's daughter own stock in this company? If so, did she not cash hers in also? Or did she keep her stock? Or did she not have any stock? I know both she and her mother dated the owner of this company, Sam Waxel (sp). I believe he hurt Martha's case just as bad as Martha's stockbroker did. Did he not admit to telling certain individuals to sell their stock? Including his own children? I have not heard anything about them either.

Regarding Ken Lay . . . I'm sure he will be totally exonerated . . . not because he is not guilty, but because he has the right friends in the right places.

Also, in closing, if you do not believe it is not still a man's world, then explain to me why they cannot find a cure for cancer, AIDS, AlS, MS, and other terrible diseases, but they can come up with a drug to make sure a man can keep an erection? I know it was by happenstance (they say) as it was suppose to be for BP; however, insurance companies will pay for prescriptions, plus they now have new and improved impotency drugs that will last up to 40 hours. As for women, my insurance company NEVER paid for my birth control pills and still does not pay for them.

[T Town Jake]

49. Exactly. The one "lesson" we can all draw from this is...

...unless it's something minor like a traffic ticket, we should never cooperate with law enforcement until the Fifth Amendment has been invoked, and a lawyer summoned to advise us on every single parsed bit of language we say aloud to the police, whether they be local, State, or Federal. This case has driven that lesson home for me in a very concrete way - Martha Stewart's felony conviction and subsequent five month sentence to prison over quibbles in the language she used with the Feds at a simple interview. Don't really care whether she was actually guilty of the major crime she was accused of (and acquitted of committing at trial) at this point: that kind of "gotcha" shit over a few words is SCARY.

[aintitfunny]

6. I find it odd

that Martha Stewart can be tried,convicted and sentenced so efficiently while Ken Lay just got indicted. Could the fact that she has been a Democratic Party contributor be a factor in what sped up the process? Could it be that someone in the current regime felt it was time to put an uppity woman in her place? I have never been a fan, never personally found a lot to like about her, but now I do feel sorry for what she has and is going through. I believe it is a shame as well.

[SoCalDem]

9. The very week she was "arrested", she had a LARGE democratic

benefit in the workd.. It was no accident...Did she do something wrong??yes.. She did LESS than our very own _president, and yet he got off scotfree and got a baseball team out of the deal..

She had no one to cover up for her..

a fine of what she "profitted" plus 50% would have been enough ..

[GreenPartyVoter]

17. I agree that they went after the little fish instead of the shark, but the

the little fish still needs to face up to what she did.

We need to do something about corporate crime in America, and I would dearly love to reopen Alcatraz for Lay and his cronies.

[indigobusiness]

10. Martha needs a dose of humility.

She put our system on trial with her obstinance.

She now exhibits the bitterness her neighbors saw in their dispute with her on Turkey Hill Road.

[Piperay]

44. Our system should

be on trial, it needs to be. x(

[KharmaTrain]

11. CNN's Doing Live NYSE Floor Reports...

It's like mating season...the CNN newsbabe absolutely glowing in the orgasm of profit taking. Yes, the verdict has won the approval of the investor class, thus it must be so. Sheesh.

I have a limited degree of sympathy for Martha's plight, as I feel she was targeted while other slime like Lay played golf, but her remarks showed that cold, bitchy side that is a major turn off. I don't know who got the worse sentence...Martha spending 5 months driving the matron's nuts or the poor housekeepers who will be forced to live in Martha's world for the other 5 months.

[in_cog_ni_to]

12. I'll rag on Martha AFTER Ken Lay

is sentenced to prison. I'm with the poster who's going to K-Mart to buy a Martha product today....I am too. The woman's "perfectness" has always grated on my nerves, but she DOES have nice products, creative ideas and IMO, doesn't deserve prison time for what's she's done, a fine should have sufficed. Her crime compared to Ken Lay's is NOTHING. She's being made an example of by the government.....they taught that rich (Democratic donor) woman a lesson! She's going to a pretty tough prison...Danbury? They say it's NO Club Fed. It's a REAL prison that houses real criminals, mostly drug offenders.

[Walt Starr]

14. My wife and I will spend several thousand dollars

on Martha Stewart furniture very soon.

I won't even consider another furniture line now.

I won't consider another paint line now.

I won't consider any product line that competes with a Martha Stewart product line.

[GreenPartyVoter]

15. Yeah, she's really gonna suffer in club fed. Betcha they'll

let her giving cooking lessons to the inmates.

[Bridget Burke]

18. It's not club fed...

"The millionaire is expected to spend 10 to 16 months sharing a toilet and working for about 12 cents an hour at the minimum-security women's prison, where the walls are drab concrete and the 1,300 inmates wear starched khaki jumpsuits."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2001877291_martha12.html

The article was published before the current sentencing, obviously.

However, she's a tough woman & I hope she does well.

[BiggJawn]

39. I seriously doubt she's gonna get bent over a bench in the shower room

"Sharing a toilet"...Oh, GAWD, NO! Just like a little poor girl in a college dorm who can't afford to get into a sorority!

She made more money today from her shares of MSM "bouncing" or whatever they did than I'll ever see in FOUR lifetimes.

I would gladly trade 5 months of my life in "Club Fed" for a return like that.

[thebigidea]

24. its hardly a vacation. I'd be going bonkers after 2 days in such a place

5 months will pass agonizingly slowly.

I never cared much for this Martha creature, but I think Eric Idle summed it up best:

So fuck you very much, Dear Mr. Bush
For heroically sitting on your tush
For Halliburton, Enron, all the companies who fail
Let's send them a clear signal and stick Martha straight in jail
She's an uppity rich bitch
and at least she isn't male
So fuck you all so very much

[Connie_Corleone]

19. Well,

When your whole life basically centered around building your own business and branding yourself, of course she's going to think of her company as her "beloved".

I'm not saying that's right, but when you love what you do for a living, sometimes that happens.

[AP]

20. Most of her actions re charges/conviction driven by her concern about MSLO

share price.

She made the penulimate sacrifice (liberty, rather than life) for a corporate entity.

These are fascinating times in which we live. Companies are so big and powerful, people are willing to go to jail for them when they so easily could have avoided jail.

[bobbieinok]

21. Savage is furious that she gets jail term----he suggested community

service.

I'm not sure why he's taking this position......

[ronabop]

47. People making money in stocks think it's okay...

To lie about how they make that money.

Repukes are like that.

-Bop

[Walt Starr]

22. I just bought a subsctiption to her magazine

for my wife.

we'll buy some Martha Stewart furniture soon too.

[Dookus]

31. I just subscribed today, too

this is the fucking lamest prosecution I've seen in years. I hope President Kerry pardons her.

[Piperay]

42. Same here

got it for myself. :-) Good for you! :thumbsup:

[gauguin57]

26. I just saw F-9/11 for the FOURTH time (I'm addicted) ... and ...

I was struck by how the James Baker law firm got Bush out of trouble with the SEC when he sold that Harken stock back in the early '90s when he wasn't supposed to.

So he's the president, and Martha gets 5 months in jail? HUH?

[Sparkly]

29. Yes, and did you hear Harvey PITT tonight making noises about justice

as if he were so principled? Isn't he the one who closed the book on the investigation into Chimp's Harken insider-trading?

[markses]

27. The support for this criminal on DU is an embarrassment for this board

And the delusions are thick and sweaty.

She should have gotten her 16 months, in any case.

[Cleita]

30. I just noticed that another criminal was apprehended today,

chess champion Bobby Fischer. WoooHooo lets indict those terrorists, a guy who plays chess and a woman who tells you a better way to clean your toilet.

[markses]

35. As far as I know, Bobby Fischer has not

been convicted in a court of law by a jury of his peers for the offense in question (which offense - violating a sanctions program on Yugoslavia for playing chess - is patently stupid, in any case, and certainly not as destructive to others as Ms. Stewart's actions). Ms. Stewart, on the other hand, did commit a crime, as was decided during a fair trial by those who heard the arguments on both sides and came to - one would think - a reasonable decision (or at least more reasonable than your bullshit here, being informed).

[Sparkly]

36. I think of what was gained and what was lost

I consider the cost in tax dollars and losses to her company and its employees.

I consider what was gained: a smokescreen for real criminality the powers that be choose to protect. And a few bucks in fines.

And what was the crime? Something she *said* when accused of a crime? (That's what they did to Clinton, isn't it?)

I'm not going to throw stones at Democrats caught jaywalking while their enemies are running people over every day and getting away with it.

[markses]

37. So? We spend thousands prosecuting car thieves, though each theft need

not exceed the amount we spend prosecuting it. You can't do a cost benefit on the principle of the law. Would you not prosecute a serial shoplifter because the prosecution would cost more than the items stolen? That's absurd. Prosecution is the social cost we pay for laws, period. Full fucking stop. It is not measured against any given crime. She was shown to have lied to federal prosecutors. That is a crime. Your arguments are so much bunk here.

[Sparkly]

38. It was important to deter "liars to federal prosecutors?"

That's what it was all about?

Okay.

[Dookus]

32. OK

when the feds accuse you of a crime, and you deny it, then they DON'T charge you with the crime, but instead accuse of you LYING about it by denying, I'll send you a cake with a file in it.

[Piperay]

43. Lots of things on this board

are more of an embarassment than support of Martha. I support Martha and I'm not embarassed. :shrug:

[Sparkly]

33. Would people be upset by a man expressing concern for his company?

Would people say he wasn't sufficiently concerned for his family? Is it different when a company is a woman's life's work? She expressed sorrow for the people who'd lost their jobs in her company and suffered.

How many women have built empires like that, compared with the number of men who commit serious white-collar crimes (or acceptable business practices that ought to be crimes). Maybe I'm biased, but it really pisses me off that they went after this successful woman, who just happened to support Democrats.

I never liked her fantasy image, I made fun of her, and I groaned when my husband, a culinary expert, fell in love with her heavy pots with the soldered handles. Now I'm glad we have them and I'll be happy to buy more.

[Cleita]

34. Of course not. Men have an entitlement for that concern.

Women are homemakers. How terrible that a women sought to make money from being a homemaker. Gee the men shoudda thought of it, but they aren't big on cleaning toilets and those things.

[ronabop]

48. I call bullshit.

She dumped her husband, and abandoned her kids. She wasn't a lowly homemaker. She was a ruthless, violent, business tycoon, and should be treated the same as any male, or female, business tycoon, *regardless* of her home life.

Being shat on by men for 3000 years doesn't give women a free pass to laugh at laws.

-Bop

[Piperay]

50. Setting the record straight

Martha did NOT dump her husband, he dumped her for another woman a "trusted" employee and she doesn't have kids she has one grown daughter that she didn't abandon. x(

[Robin Hood]

40. Wow strong talk...from fedup!

Why do yo feel so strongly? I continue to buy her products and magazines because I find them (her and her businesses) inspiring. Martha is no martyr...

You know she is a democrat...so why are you find such contempt...well frankly fedup2 I really don't care what you think. Martha will remain in my heart and prayers.

[frankly_fedup2]

52. So what you are saying Liberal-G is that since she is a Democrat . . .

I should support her? That she has really done no wrong because she is a Democrat?

Oh puhlease.

You keep buying Martha Stewart's products and keep the cash rolling in. Last time I went into K-Mart it looked like K-Martha. Everything in that store had her face on it.

If you cannot see what her motives were, than I will never convince you or change your mind. It's her motives for doing what she did that disgusted me. THEN, when she came out and made a statement, it was like a Martha Stewart Living commercial. Not appropriate concerning the circumstances. Also, her company is a "thing," and people always have plenty of "things;" however, you only have one family, and to me, my family would be "Beloved," not my "thing" I created that is a cash cow. Her statements yet, again, showed why Martha is Martha. G-R-E-E-D. above anything else.

Also, opinions are like assholes . . . everybody's got one.

[Piperay]

41. Well I took out a subscription

to her magazine today even though I don't need more magazines around but I want to help out a fellow Democrat especially one who is being made into a scapegoat. :mad: