By Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje
Sun Sentinel / San Antonio Express-News
March 11, 2005
Things
couldn't look sunnier for the erstwhile doyenne of "homekeeping," Martha
Stewart, the woman America loves to hate -- or at least did in the
past.
Her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., pared down in
the wake of her jail sentence, has since started rehiring workers. Her daily
homemaking show is in the process of being revamped.
The disgraced
domestic diva has served a five-month sentence for lying to federal prosecutors
about her shady stock sell-off last year. Now out of jail, she is enjoying the
taste of limited freedom.
And here's the clincher: Come September,
Stewart will star in her own reality TV show, a spinoff of Donald Trump's The
Apprentice that will feature 18 hapless Martha wannabes vying for the chance
to toil under her dictatorial gaze. The winner will snag a one-year job that
pays $250,000.
But the question on everyone's mind is: Can Martha truly
rise from the ashes?
In an era of corporate scandal when fallen CEOs file
shamefully from the boardroom in serial perp walks, can Martha regain her former
glory and live to decoupage and deglaze another day? Or has jail forever
tarnished her image as the purveyor of all things perfect, the woman who made
the rest of us feel guilty for not ironing our sheets or hand painting our own
Christmas wrapping paper?
"Absolutely she will rise again, even stronger
than before," says William Arruda, a well-known branding consultant in New York.
"She offers something to the world that nobody else offers. When you think about
domestic divas, who do you think could be No. 2? There really is nobody. We love
to live vicariously through her."
Arruda says the nature of her
transgression also will lend itself to the public's desire to forgive
her.
"Her indiscretion had nothing to do with the reason people love
her," he says. "If we had learned that Martha couldn't really make a soufflé or
if she had a gardener who did all the work for her, then we'd feel duped. Her
credibility would be gone. But what she did has absolutely no connection to her
work. It's like Winona Ryder shoplifting or George Michael having anonymous sex
in bathrooms. None of that stuff destroys people's reputations
anymore."
Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of
Popular Television at Syracuse University, says that, ironically, Stewart's
arrest could have been the best thing to happen to her brand, which was wearing
a distinctly dated '90s feel at the time the scandal hit.
"Now that she
has served her time, however, there is the possibility of revitalization,
indeed, an entire reinvention, of her celebrity status," he says. "People who
never cared about Martha Stewart's TV show followed her legal woes with interest
and enthusiasm. Having become a national soap opera character as the Miss
Perfect who fell deliciously from grace, Martha then became something of a
martyr, being asked to serve time that even those who love to hate her thought
might be a bit excessive."
Most people don't even fully understand what
it was she did wrong, he adds -- although the general sense is her crime really
only hurt other rich people. This fact separates Stewart from the other
disgraced corporate big wigs of recent times, such as Enron's Ken Lay, whose
shenanigans had more far-reaching effect.
"Martha only shot herself in
the foot. She didn't hurt anybody else," says Hayes Roth, vice president of
Worldwide Marketing, a leading brand consultant. "Ken Lay and the rest committed
what I view as crimes against humanity."
Think, too, of all the good work
Stewart did while in minimum-security Camp Cupcake, as it was called -- lobbying
for better food and prison reform, helping underprivileged women start
businesses, raising money for the American Cancer Society.
Stewart's
gender might also play a role in America's willingness to let her back into
their hearts, or at least their pocketbooks. So, too, will the prevailing
opinion that the government, in a sense, ganged up on Stewart, prosecuting her
for simply trying to save her own skin, a very human reaction.
Coupled
with that is the notion that the feds went after her in the first place simply
because she is a celebrity. All this has served to soften the rigid Martha in
the public eye.
"A powerful woman on top of her game may be hard to take,
but a defeated woman bested by a bunch of nasty men is someone we can all relate
to," says Lisa Earle McLeod, syndicated columnist and author of Forget
Perfect.
Martha has paid her dues and now has "street cred," a macha
whiff of the big house, say experts.
Remember, too, that the American
people are an extremely understanding lot. Fitzgerald got it wrong: There really
are second acts in this country. Think Bill Clinton, Marv Albert, Pee-wee
Herman. Even The Donald himself, a man who hasn't let repeated bankruptcy dent
his own inflated self-image and lust for the limelight. All Martha needs for
complete redemption is to show a little humility, a sense of having learned her
lesson, to win her way back to the top, some say.
But the real question,
says culture watchers, isn't whether Stewart's release from prison and new
reality TV show will give her a huge boost of publicity -- it undoubtedly will.
The question is will the buzz last for years down the road? And will it put
Martha permanently back in her coveted place as pop icon?
It all depends
on how she plays things, wagers Syracuse's Thompson. Donald Trump has prospered
on The Apprentice simply because he realizes that for the show to work he
needs to play a caricature of himself -- ridiculously macho, arbitrary and
cut-throat. The Donald on steroids.
"Martha, it seems, will be much less
likely to camp it up the way Donald has been willing to do," he says. "Of
course, this could make The Apprentice: Martha Stewart all the more
delectable. The only thing funnier than watching a self-consciously goofy person
act pompous and self-important is to watch someone who doesn't realize this is
all part of a big joke. It's been a long time since I've looked so forward to a
new TV series as I look forward to Martha's Apprentice."
Not everyone thinks Martha might be coated in Teflon.
"Yes,
she's bouncing back, but she's not bouncing back as the professional corporate
brand she was before she went to jail," says Mike Paul, a national reputation
management specialist and president of MGP & Associates PR. "She's bouncing
back as a reality TV star, and that's a very different thing. People who put on
these reality shows don't care how well your brand does. They just want people
to watch. Martha is now the Humpty Dumpty who sat on the wall -- she's scrambled
eggs. And after 15 minutes of fame, scrambled eggs tend to
spoil."
Mario Almonte, a public relations expert in New York, says
Stewart can't act short-tempered and overbearing on her new show a la Donald
because "our culture still doesn't accept overbearing female bosses." But
where's the fun in watching a polite Martha Stewart? Won't half the fun be
watching her slice-and-dice her hapless wannabes?
Stay tuned. It may be a
good thing.
Copyright © 2005, South Florida
Sun-Sentinel
