What exactly did Martha Stewart do that was so wrong that she needs to go to jail for five months? I don’t think she is any danger to herself or society. Getting her off the streets and into the Big House just doesn’t make sense. Why are we wasting all this taxpayer money to put her in her place? It isn’t worth it. I am not afraid of Martha Stewart. I think prison should be for people who may be harmful to others, and I just cannot imagine that her passion for entertaining is going to turn her into a menace to society.
I am not sure prison is used in the right way in our country. We have it as a place of punishment, but exactly what is the point of punishing some people? What is the cautionary tale brought forth by this odd set of circumstance? Are we not supposed to have ambition? Don’t use raffia. Do not garnish. Never know what fork you are going to use. Never set down more utensils than is absolutely necessary. One would imagine that Martha Stewart’s efforts would be welcomed by a patriarchal system, one that naturally subjugates women and finds their silence and labor virtuous.
The problem is that Martha Stewart was not a homemaker. She was an entrepeneur. She was not selling the recipes and party plans and ‘good things’ in order to promote stay at home moms and give undue labor to keep women’s minds from wandering to books and feminist theory. She was promoting the idea of perfection, wherever you could have it. It was about that notion of perfecting something, and then it becoming yours. This was the American Dream as it could be made accessible to American women. You could empower yourself through action, and that is probably the danger that Martha Stewart represents. She is the authority on independence, and that is what we don’t want from our mothers and for our daughters.
You can’t wear a burqua and tie raffia properly. You need freedom and a wide table if you want to make your own marshmallows or liquid soap from scratch. The thought that putting Martha away for a time is some kind of blow to the misogynist family structure is dangerous. If anything, she is a political prisoner. America doesn’t like women who are powerful and successful and not nice about it.
That was the main criticism against Stewart. She wasn’t a nice lady. Why are manners always going to have to be part of the package? If you mind your p’s and q’s, is that going to be what keeps you out of jail? The problem of minding your manners is one that might keep you locked down, in the realm of thought that would make your life unremarkable, that mediocrity on any level is preferable to excess of ambition, desire and greed. What is so wrong with greed? It is what makes the world go around.
Martha Stewart is a political prisoner. The unceremonious denial of her freedom should make us seriously question our own.