What pisses me off even more is that there are people who have done **much ** worse things and have not gone to jail. In fact she is not going to jail for selling stock based on an illegal tip. She is simply going to jail for lying to prosecutors (I think) during the investigation. Given all the other shit others have done on Wall Street over the years (and gotten away with) , going to jail for “lying to prosecutors” seems quite unfair, especially if she was lying about something that in itself was not illegal.
(reminds me of *someone * who lied about getting a blow job)
Well, insider trading is definitely illegal. The entire concept of publicly owned corporations is undermined by insider trading, so it must be illegal, and vigorously prosecuted. She may not have technically been guilty of insider trading (we won’t know since they didn’t prosecute her for that) but that’s not a right to hinder the investigation of those activities. She conspired to hide the illegal activities of others, for that she deserves jail time.
She does not deserve to be plastered all over the newspapers and airwaves with every stupid detail of jail life. Isn’t there anything more important to talk about?
I’m rooting for Martha as well. She is a person of great accomplishments having ended up in prison for commiting an act (lying) that we all have been guilty of. Something wrong here folks. I just find it incredulous that this woman who has worked so hard for the betterment of others has to endure some of the details that are being reported.
It could be your mother. She’s never lied you say?
Has she reported all her income from last year’s garage sale ?
It could have happened to all the white collar criminals who get away with exactly the same sort of shit every day. The Martha Stewart case was an absolute boon for the government and the SEC, because it allows them to be seen to be “doing something” about white collar crime and manipulation of the stock market without making any of the substantive systemic changes that should have followed the whole Enron, WorldCom, etc. fiascos.
Stewart is a high-profile catch who has served the purpose of redirecting the public’s attention away from the fact that the system itself tacitly encourages extremely unethical behavior on the part of those in the position to benefit most and do the most damage to small investors. The big brokerage houses get away with laughable fines for their unethical tactics and misleading advice; Martha Stewart gets jail time for lying.
Like most people in this thread, i don’t really like her that much. I just think it’s unfortunate that her situation has served the purpose of papering over the real problems.
Could be wrong, but I’m reasonably sure Mom never reaped a windfall from a stock sale thanks to a hot tip that it was about to go in the tank, and then lied to federal investigators about it. She had style, though.
I think we should be grateful that the whole tiresome Martha affair at least provides an issue on which the Left and Right have found common ground. For the former, it’s a case of Dragging Down A Successful Woman and Others Have Gotten Away With It, while for the latter it’s Government Persecution Of A Successful Business Person.
Hell, if there’s big money involved, let’s put all their sleazy butts in jail.
My husband came home from work talking about this very issue. One of his executive staff was talking about the media attention towards her plight and he felt that he had raised a good point.
What kind of society do we have where we, in many circles, celebrate the incarceration of this woman, and make jokes about it? She was not a murderer, rapist or other violent criminal. She was a dishonest investor, committing acts that have been going on in the hallowed halls of the patriarchical capitalist system for 100’s of years.
Like her, hate her, it does not matter. Focus on the fact that right now she is experiencing one of the most frightening, embarassing and invasive moments of her life. She is being made to strip in front of others, bend over, spread her buttocks, squat and cough. She is subject to search at anytime, she has no privacy and she has to eat food that is deisgned to give basic nutrition and calories (my husband eats at least one general population meal a week because he believes he should send a message to the population that the food is ok. He tells me it is ok, nothing great, but heavy in carbs and fat). She is surrounded by some very unsavory characters and she is viewed by many of the staff as only a name and number.
In sum, she is being SEVERELY punished for lying, and to relish in it, laugh at it, mock it or scoff at it, is not only demonstrating a lack of compassion, it is demonstrating a lack of perspective. The perspective comes from the fact that we do not cheer when the most violent criminals are put away in these same conditions, rather we focus on an allegedly “bitchy”, self made woman who was only playing by the informal business rules that were in existence long before she came onto the field.
She did something wrong. She volunteered to do her time in lieu of waiting for the appeal. Let her do her time and go about her life. If you don’t like her, don’t buy her products, tell your friends not to. However, don’t mock her pain right now. She is paying for what she has done.
I’ve never seen this much incessant, voyeuristic fascination for the humiliation of any man, including people like Ivan Boskey who were rich men convicted of corporate crimes.
I don’t believe people are sincerely outraged about Martha’s crime in itself as much as they are getting off on this just because they like to see a powerful woman being humiliated.
Also, on the same page there’s a response with cites about what spinning is and further discussion of its relations to insider trading and so forth.
My opinion is that the business about Martha being prosecuted for lying rather than insider trading is that it’s a sleazy, nitpicky way of not getting called for one’s true intentions – sort of like the guys who insist that the prosecution of Bill Clinton wasn’t about a blowjob. Stewart lied – about her insider trading. One follows the other. Saying that the insider trading would have been OK if she hadn’t lied about it just reeks of bullshit.
Could be a little bit of low-level sexual stuff going on here, too. Not for nothing did the Spike network have a women-in-prison movie marathon on Friday. And not for nothing is there a subgenre called “women in prison movies.”
To be fair Diogenes, I think a lot of us don’t think it is such a big deal for a man to be strip searched. We think of men as tougher and less inclined towards privacy and body dignity. And men are definitely percieved to be more adaptable to restrictions of captivity.
Men generally aren’t so private about their bodies. Men shower in front of others naked, while pissing in full public view. If someone was doing a cavity search on me, I would probably feel somewhat more sorry for the poor guard who is getting intimate with my asshole because he can’t get a better job !
Except in the company of women, men do need feel the need to restrain a fart. You will rarely hear a woman fart unless she’s been married to you for 20 years.
And you may particularly notice that 60 + year old women rarely wear bikinis, yet men are rarely afraid to expose the bulbous tummies and skinny legs.
I never gave much of a thought to what it would be like for a woman in prison, but this Martha Stewart incarceration somehow seems to cause me to want to learn more about it. I suspect that prison for older women is much more punishing.
I’m sorry, but I’m just not buying all this misogyny stuff. People simply know much more about Martha Stewart than they do the relatively anonymous corporate nogoodniks being mentioned here. They know the way she has behaved toward others, and this, combined with her stiff, uptight demeanor and the total lack of warmth in her personality, causes people to dislike her intensely. My guess is they feel she’s getting her just deserts. She has been alienating people for years and a lot of resentment has built up among the populace…much more so than I would ever have guessed. I think what we’re seeing is just that rare occasion where someone actually seems to be getting what they’ve got coming and people are relishing it. I think it will be much the same way if Scott Peterson is convicted. People despise him because of all his lies and because of the way he’s treated women in his life, and while they may not be as interested in his living conditions – which in the case of Martha Stewart carries a lot of irony – I think people will feel just as gleeful that he will seem to be getting what he’s got coming to him.