# Help the European guy: Who's Martha Stewart? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 10, 2003, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-european-guy-whos-martha-stewart/180831 "2003-06-10T11:23:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2003, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-european-guy-whos-martha-stewart/180831/21 "2003-06-11T02:26:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bottle of Smoke \* > \*\*No. Any why? Because there is no justice in this world, dammit. Bob Vila - how I despise him! The putz. With his neatly trimmed beard and his clean polo shirts. The bastard! With the Sears commercials…and the constant product placement in his show (“Ah yes, Riley, I see you are using Georgia Pacific veneered plywood”)…and the boring neverending tours of antibellum mansions…and…and… > > It’s a construction site, Bob! Lose the loafers and the khaki slacks! You’ve been a self-styled home improvement guru for decades and you don’t even look like you could saw your way out of a wet paper pag! > > You have done the impossible – you have actaully gotten me to _like_ Steve Thomas in comparison. You’re a poser. Norm carried your sorry ass all those years, man! > > …\*\* From what I have heard and read, pretty much no one who has worked with Bob Vila has anything nice to say about him. I read an interview with Norm Abrams a few years back in which Norm pretty much bent over backwards NOT to say even the most general niceties about Vila. Bob is apparently not a very warm guy. I don’t get the Martha abuse. I rarely watch her stuff but I find her mildlly entertaining. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/13edae/32.png) [@Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2003, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-european-guy-whos-martha-stewart/180831/22 "2003-06-11T02:50:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by twickster \* > \*\*Seriously, **astorian** – I think **genie** ’s onto something when she mentions gender roles. No matter how “liberated” we career gals are, no matter how strongly feminist our mothers may have been, the imperative to “make homes” has crept into many (most?) women’s consciousness. The whole cooking, cleaning, crafts, decorating, thing – the making of the home – is (has been) seen to be women’s work. \*\* To be completely fair, there are male gender roles, too. We’re the ones who are supposed to fix the car, mow the lawn, squash bugs – and yes, fix that damned leaky sink or install that new built-in bookshelf. In short, the stuff that Bob Vila does. And yet, somehow, I have managed to refrain from hating Bob Vila in spite of the fact that I wouldn’t know a crescent wrench if it bit me on the ass. Nor do I feel terribly guilty about it. If you and **genie** feel “guilty” about your lack of domestic perfection, that’s your own hangup. You shouldn’t pin it on Martha Stewart, who, at the end of the day, is just hawking cooking tips and decorating ideas. \*\* > [@](#): > > Martha Stewart presents an ideal of that that is not truly attainable by an actual human being leading the messy disasters that most of us call our lives – Martha pulls it off because she has a staff of however many that she treats like doo-doo (according to friends of friends, the gossip columns, etc – IOW, no actual cites). \*\* To be fair to Ms. Stewart, she was hardly rich when she started out. The huge staff came much later. She apparently still managed to run one of the finest homes in Westport, plus a catering business on the side. To suggest that isn’t “truly attainable” is fallacious, particularly by what I would imagine to be Martha’s key audience – relatively wealthy homemakers who don’t work outside the home. More to the point, it isn’t like Ms. Stewart suggests that she doesn’t have a staff, or even that every homemaker must do every task the “Martha way” lest they be deemed inferior. She presents nifty ideas, some of which may grab you, some of which don’t. Y’know, like every other “how to” show on television. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2003, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-european-guy-whos-martha-stewart/180831/23 "2003-06-11T05:43:39Z")
But other shows on TV don’t promote each and everything as A Good Thing. For our Belgian OP, “It’s a good thing” is Martha’s favorite catchphrase, always said after even the most inane stuff. > [@](#): > > I’m using a 7 and 9/16" diameter terra cotta pot, which was handmade by the Honduran sea captain’s eldest daughter from Franciscan mud. If I turn it around, you can still see her fingerprints in the pot. One of my fondest memories is watching my grandmother re-pot her dandelions in Honduran pots with freshly baked potting soil. She’d bake it in a 350-degree oven for 43 minutes to ensure any parasites have been killed and won’t harm the dandelions. After I place some boiled pebbles from the Nile river in the bottom of the pot for drainage, I spoon in some of my own baked potting soil, leaving it in a shallow cone shape to accept the plant’s roots. A quarter-inch titanium aircraft drill bit makes the perfect size hole for the dandelion’s taproot. Ease the taproot into the hole and gently sprinkle on potting soil using a sterling silver sugar shell. Once the pot is filled, carefully tamp the soil. And that’s the proper way to re-pot a dandelion. It’s a good thing! That may be fictional, but I did once see this woman bake dirt on TV. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2003, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-european-guy-whos-martha-stewart/180831/24 "2003-06-11T12:55:44Z")
She radiates kind of a smug superiority. For years I just loathed her. We are talking about a Grand Mal Induced kind of teeth grating. But then I realized I was a hypocrite, as her magazine ( _Living_ and the new cooking one which I forget the title) are the only home decorating mags that I actually like. The style is not cluttered or overly pretentious and the How-to sections are some of the best in pictures and descriptions. She alone has helped me overcome paralyzing fear of sewing and crafts, by introducing non-kitschy crafts. Nice simple things. I really buy the mag for the _Good Things_ section. It is my favorite. Everything after that is just candy. Her _Kids_ and \*_Baby_ magazines are beautifully done without pandering down to the mothers IQ. (After you read _Parenting_ and _Parents_ for awhile, you realize they talk down to new moms and it is vastly annoying.) Though, the Baby and Kids stuff does have a New York air about it. And, the cooking magazine, which is about 5 x 7’’ in size, is perfect for a purse. That, by far, is simply genius. Bunching up a mag to take with me to the store is a pain. One recipe on each page. Her recipes for cookies are, by far, the easiest and most delicious I have found and again, the steps are broken down for the culinary impaired. The writers for the segments have a way of breaking down the information and one in particular about cookies made sense: It all starts with the same basic ingrediants: butter,flour, sugar, baking soda. After those you can experiment. Well, for this Kitchen retard, that was the lightbulb that went on for me. I have torn out segments on the uses of eggs, potatos and what not and have saved them in a binder to help me teach my kids when they are in the kitchen. My beef with her continues to be with the bizarre ingredients or implements she says you need to make something in the kitchen. It’s like there is one ingredient - Organic Yak Butter - that is so odd that I would have to special order it from Peru to get it. This can be maddening for morons in the kitchen, like myself. If there are two things she has done is that _Living_ has revolutionized how photography is done in magazines. Up close shots, simple backgrounds that are fuzzed out and facial shots that focus on the clean lines of a human face, not a cluttered background. Major magazines (Parents and two others, I noticed, but cannot recall) have changed their style recently. The other is that she has brought some class into Kmart. I don’t know why they - Kmart - don’t get rid of their kid’s clothing line. It is cute clothing that is made simply horrendous with an embroidered Big Bird or Elmo all over it. Ugh. Her website is nice, with some of the Crafts there, but the pricing on the goods for sale is just retail rape. (Sales, though, are quite excellent. I bought a cake pan shaped like a pyramid - originally $50! for like $6 and use it for ice cream molds.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-the-european-guy-whos-martha-stewart/180831.md?page=1)