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Fri 5 Mar, 2004 05:47 pm
Poor sweet little ole Martha Stewart was found guilty on four counts. I feel sorry for all the people who depend on her company for their jobs. But I don't feel sorry for Martha. She is a greedy, nasty tempered, woman whose compulsion to get rich caused her to trample, lie and steal from anyone who got in her way. She deserved what she got from the jury.
BBB
I think she was charged because because she was a conspicuous public figure--rich and successful enough to threaten many egos.
Arrogantly she tried to cover her tracks--and lied.
She was convicted because she could not/did not inspire affection and loyality.
I dunno. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I don't particularly like Martha Stewart and agree with everything BBB says about her. The verdict was just. On the other hand, I don't understand making a big brouhaha about an illegal. venal act which actually hurt no one, while letting perpetrators of violent crimes off with a warning or releasing them back into society due to a technicality. Many people just hate la Stewart because she is so rich and successful. We root for the underdog and cackle gleefully when a rich bitch gets more than just a slap on the wrist.
What constantly amazes me is that these people who are already filthy rich, will lie and cheat to make a little more. Do they think they've got some divine right?
Merry Andrew
Merry Andrew, I had mixed emotions about Martha Stewart when she was indicted, pondering whether or not it made a difference that she was a successful business woman.
But what she did was so arrogant and stupidly compulsive that she brought her troubles on herself. Her actions were so typical of her life-long demons.
Martha has very few real friends. Her life patterns demonstrate that she cultivates "friends" that can help her attain wealth. She uses, exploits, and abuses these "friends" and then cries when they turn against her and expose her. She always blames others when she gets into trouble. Her "friendships" usually don't go very deep and when they no longer can use each other, the friendship ends.
There is a rule well known by anyone who worked for Martha Stewart. Get your money up front because she will try not to pay you when the work is finished. Martha not only abused her "friends" and family, but she abused her employees even more.
This dark side of Martha was her downfall. She once remarked after she was indited that the government couldn't touch her because she was too rich. Poor arrogant Martha was brought down by a jury who didn't consider her better than everyone else.
BBB
It's a general atmosphere of take all you can get, any time, any way, pervading the world business community. Every person is called on to be a part of it or suffer the consequenses of not being "business minded." Even the prters and ditch diggers are expected in some ways to go along, even knowing, at the bottom of the pile, they simply get laid on. Martha was one more cog in a machine, a symptom of the real problem.
Stewart Juror: Guilty Verdict a Victory
Stewart Juror: Guilty Verdict a Victory
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press Writer
March 5, 2004, 7:07 PM EST
NEW YORK -- The one juror who spoke publicly Friday about how the jury made up its mind in the Martha Stewart trial called the guilty verdict a victory for "the average guy."
Chappell Hartridge, a 47-year-old computer technician at an insurance company, said he hopes the verdict sends a message to corporations that "they have to abide by the rules and no one's above the law."
"Maybe it's a victory for the little guy who loses money in the markets because of these types of transactions, the people who lose money in 401(k) plans," Hartridge said.
"Maybe it might give the average guy a little more confident feeling that (he) can invest in the market and everything will be on the up and up."
Stewart was convicted Friday on four charges of conspiracy, making false statements and obstruction of justice. Her ex-stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, also was found guilty in the stock scandal.
Hartridge and the other 11 jurors -- four men and eight women -- deliberated over three days before reaching the verdict.
Hartridge said the appearance at the trial of Stewart's celebrity pals like Rosie O'Donnell and Bill Cosby may have backfired.
"If anything, we may have taken it a little as an insult," he said. "Is that supposed to sway our opinion?"
Some of the testimony about the way she ran her business left the impression, at least on him, that she thought she was "above everyone."
He also said her background as a stockbroker worked against her because the jury believed she should have known what she was doing was illegal.
Hartridge said jurors were especially swayed by testimony from Stewart's personal assistant, Ann Armstrong.
Armstrong testified that Stewart altered the log of a message that Bacanovic left her on the day Stewart sold her Imclone stock.
The original message read: "Peter Bacanovic thinks ImClone is going to start trading downward."
Armstrong testified Stewart saw the message about a month later and replaced it with the words: "Peter Bacanovic re imclone." She later changed it back.
During the six-week trial, the jurors were referred to by numbers instead of names because the judge wanted to make sure no one discovered their identities and tried to influence them. After the verdicts were delivered, she gave them permission to speak about the deliberations.
Hartridge said it was impossible to avoid references to the case during the six-week trial. "You see it on the front pages. You see it on the subway," he said.
He said he went to work and "was threatened, `Don't come back to work if you convict her.'"
"I took it as a joke," he said with a chuckle.
I think your right edgar, and this ideology is no less corrosive than the marxist ideology it opposed with such fervor.
We're on the same page, acq.
I dunno... if your stockbroker called and said one of your stocks was headed down, would you sell? Especially if you looked at the market and indeed, it was headed down.
I think Martha Stewart's appeal will work because perjury is supposed to be based on two witnesses. I can't see how that can be construed to be one witness plus that same witness's notes. The judge made a mistake in her ruling.
I've been from one end of the spectrum to the other on this case. I was no fan of Martha Stewart. But the "innovative" arguments of the prosecution bother me Precedents set in this case can be used to go after other people for what ever purpose the state has in mind, with minimal if any evidence in hand.
I was/am a fan of Martha's. I subscribe to her magazine, have several of her books and have purchased alot of her merchandise. I appreciate her sense of style and what her company represents. And I think what's happened to her absolutely stinks and the only reason it went down this way is because she's a woman with a bitch reputation. If Ken Lay walks the streets freely, so should Martha Stewart. Did she ruin hundreds of lives? Defraud loyal employees and boardmembers? Don't think so. It's one big, fat, nasty sham and a slap in the face to all women who get too big and powerful for the boys to control.
I'm with you, eoe; I admire her too. To me, this case is all about slapping down uppity women -- not too surprising in this throwback age when hardly anyone will even admit to being a feminist.
BBB -- About the media gossiping that she is a bitch, doesn't pay her workers, etc. -- However could she manage to have such a willing group of creative people working for Omnimedia and making it such a huge success if she were that bad? I have no personal knowledge of her other than my long-time reading of her magazine which has shown me that she's willing given credit where it is due and allowed many people, men and women, to showcase their fine talents in cooking, landscaping, and other home arts.
What successful woman isn't called a bitch, anyway?
The government is a winner. Martha Stewart was found guilty. The question now, will the business that she built survive. And if it does not, who will the losers be?
I think to say that she was convicted because she was a woman, is really clutching at straws.
Noddy24 wrote:I think she was charged because because she was a conspicuous public figure--rich and successful enough to threaten many egos.
I don't like Martha, but I've felt she was just a target from the beginning. The justice department is picking high profile cases to make examples out of people. This method is wrong.
But then this administration comes out of Texas and they practice the outdated barbarian way of justice in Texas.
Martha Stewart is a Democrat. That's why they picked her over everyone else.
roverroad, that doesn't make much sense either. Stewart is a Democrat? Who knew? I didn't. Prosecuting her on the basis of political affiliation would make sense only if she was a conspicuous Democrat, either in politics or someone who is well-known for espousing Democrat causes or contributing to the war-chests of prominent Democrats. I do agree that she was prosecuted vigorously because she is in the public eye and the case was bound to be high profile. And I certainly agree with Wilso: to say she was hounded because of her gender is like saying O.J. Simpson was tried because he's black.
According to the rightwing website
NewsMax, Martha Stewart was a major supporter of the Democrats.
Quote:Martha Stewart: Democrat Mega-Donor
Embattled doyenne of domesticity Martha Stewart was a major Democratic Party donor for most of the 1990s, giving the legal maximum to the campaigns of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, along with more than $100,000 in additional cash to related Democratic causes.
Federal Election Commission records reviewed by NewsMax.com showed that Stewart has given nearly $170,000 to Democratic Party accounts since 1992, including $3,000 to Bill Clinton for his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, $2,000 for Gore's 2000 White House bid and $1,000 for Hillary Clinton's New York Senate campaign.
Stewart's donations to combined Democratic accounts were much more generous, with her largest single contribution - $75,000 - funneled into the Democratic Party's "Unity" account in 2001. She gave another $25,000 in 2001 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
In September 2000, the lifestyle diva also kicked in $10,000 to the Democratic National Committee.
Stewart's donor records showed no contributions to Republicans.
You can say that being a successful woman didn't have anything to do with this trial, but I'm not the only one who thinks her being an uppity woman made Martha Stewart a thrilling target for the SEC.
Status as female celebrity hurt Martha Stewart
JONATHAN D. GLATER; The New York Times
Quote:
"In Martha Stewart's case, there are a lot of interesting convergences," said Yale Law School professor Dan Kahan. "There's a kind of overlapping set of diverse cultural, ideological motivations that might make her a target."
Stewart has long been a lightning rod because she has been politically active, female, powerful and rich in her dual roles as a celebrity and an adviser on taste.
Stewart's supporters have contended that the decision to prosecute her was motivated by the desire to take down a popular, public female chief executive. Some say she became a target for prosecution because she supported members of the Democratic Party; others say she simply was not part of an old boy network.
Her critics assert that convicting her was important precisely because she is a media figure, that if she had been allowed to get away with improper activity the wrong message would have been sent to too many people.
Law professor Mary Becker of DePaul University College of Law said there are not many women who are successful in business - let alone a media business - and that made her a target.
"It's hard to imagine a male in precisely this spot," she said. "Targeting a successful woman is very consistent with dominant cultural values." She compared the prosecution of Stewart to criticism of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was first lady. Women face tougher standards in business and politics, she said, because those arenas are still heavily dominated by men.
Kahan pointed out that Stewart's alleged rudeness to underlings was a topic at her trial in a way it might not have been had she been a male senior executive.
"A woman who lords it over other people and who asserts her authority is going to provoke a kind of resentment that a lot of men who do the same thing, won't," he said. "There's no question about that."
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