Boy, are my arms tired! Witching Hour. As if the world needs another pundit.

PREVIOUS NEXT

Martha Stewart: Still Living or What Becomes a Felon Most

Martha Stewart has been sentenced to a term of five months in prison for lying to federal investigators about the details concerning a stock trade she made in 2001. For some onlookers, the whole Stewart indictment and trial seemed like an elaborate performance enacted by the government to prove that it could be tough on white-collar criminals. Or as Stewart put it, it was "an almost fatal circus event of unprecedented proportions.” For others it was merely well-deserved comeuppance for a cocky, "too" successful woman who had been convicted of breaking the law.

Perhaps Stewart, as her supporters claim, was used as a scapegoat by the government — a government led by an administration known to be hand-in-glove with at least one of the corporations at the heart of the financial scandals of the last few years. It would have been politically useful for something or someone to deflect the public's attention from the relationship between President Bush and the Enron Corporation. Seen this way, Martha's five month sentence does seem like a stiff punishment for telling a small lie that, by itself, did negligible harm. By contrast, Lea Fastow will serve only one year in federal prison for signing a fraudulent tax return to help her husband hide ill-gotten gains from schemes that fueled the Enron’s crash and financially ruined the lives of many. (Of course, she accepted a plea bargain that will allow her to raise her children in exchange for helping prosecutors go after bigger fish.)

On the other hand, Stewart probably isn't innocent of the charges, either. A former Wall Street trader, who took a tiny catering business and built it into a multi-billion dollar empire, and was known to micro-manage the smallest details of her empire, could not credibly claim that she didn’t know what she was doing in relationship to said stock sale. Her argument, that it was an automatic transaction, one that she did not personally approve, rang hollow to the jury and to many who followed the trial. Someone who would have the focus to stencil their own Valentine's Day decorations weeks ahead of that holiday, would certainly be aware of the auspicious and suspicious timing of the sale of shares in a friend's company right before the stock was going to tank. Frankly, after years of very public competence, it was too late in the game for Stewart to play dumb.

No, ignorance did not work as a defense for Stewart. But will it work for Kenneth Lay? Lay, former head of Enron, a company that became synonymous with scandal, and a personal friend of George W. Bush’s, is claiming just that. In response to his recent indictment, he says he didn’t know about all the illegal accounting tricks that were falsely propping up the former energy giant’s profits. It seems, he was just a hands-off-kinda-guy, a figurehead, who was not on top of the day-to-day operations of his company. No one told him what was going on. (Since being indicted, he claims Andrew Fastow, former Enron finance chief, and Lea's husband, was the mastermind of any wrongdoing.)

Similarly, ignorance is his buddy George Bush’s defense. Bush, who led the U.S. to war with Iraq on false claims of Saddam Hussein’s possession of WMDs, now swears that he, too, was given bad information. Of course, Mr. Bush has kept expectations of his personal intelligence on the low side for many years. When everyone thinks you're stupid, no one is surprised when you make a mistake. It works for him.

What all three of these prominent people have in common is an inability to express remorse for their actions. Stewart deflects responsibility for her blunders by claiming she is the victim of a witch hunt. Lay claims he didn’t know that he was lying during those months when his company was almost bankrupt and he was still encouraging investors to sink their money into it. And Bush, after a television appearance in which he said he couldn’t think of anything he’d done since taking office that he regretted, is asserting that he was right to go into Iraq under any auspices. One wonders if he is hoping that the best defense is to be offensive.

The significant difference separating these three probable liars is that Stewart will most likely bounce back from her disgrace. Shares of stock in her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, soared, up 29 percent on the day of her sentencing. "I will be back," she told a crowd outside the New York courthouse where she learned of her punishment. No one doubts her.

Kenny Boy Lay will have a much tougher road to go than Stewart. She is still well liked despite being a felon. Lay is not liked. In fact, he is the reviled, embodiment of corporate malfeasance. Even a public exoneration in the U.S. courts will not clean him up enough to make him presentable to any legitimate organization concerned with public perception. Like O.J., he will likely be relegated to a lifetime of teeing off with the also-rans on the public course.

Bush may be ousted pretty soon from his job, too. His falsehoods, buffoonery and lack of shame have made him an easy target for a reinvigorated Democratic party and its supporters. Being the kind of guy who never met a business he couldn’t run into the ground, Bush will probably go back to doing the things he likes best — like loafing around on his family’s dime or making the odd, well-paid speech to a crowd that isn’t too particular about syntax, intelligence or honesty.

In the end, what truly sets Stewart apart from these other infamous characters and ensures her return to a version of her former success, is that she has actual, marketable skills. She can make her own bread, paint her own house, publish her own magazine and do almost anything else one could name. Her fans will want to see her doing those things again. Lay and Bush don’t seem to know how to do anything but the kinds of activities that fall under the heading of 'public relations.' Our society disproportionately rewards salespeople like them — people who can persuade, or bully if nothing else does the job. But, when those lovable hucksters finally lose their veneer of credibility, they'll end up with nothing left to peddle. After all, no one buys from the same used car lot twice. Do they?

WITCHING HOUR ARCHIVE:
CURRENT -2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17

She took a lickin', but nothing like the one she may get in a women's prison.