Politics: Onward from New Hampshire

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Hindsight's 20-20.

I said that before the verdict. The minute I heard about her 21 minute defense case, I knew she was going down. I just didn't know it was going to be on all counts.

I also thought putting those e-mails from Fanuiel to his friend about her being a bitch hurt her more than helped her.

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
It certainly couldn't have been worse. Based on the evidence presented, the strategy seemed reasonable. Of course, given the nature of the charges, her explanation of what was going on surely would have helped.

I just think that if any defense counsel believes the idea that juries hold prosecutors to their burden of proving their cases beyond a reasonable doubt, they are fools. Without evidence from the defendant rebutting the prosecution's case, defendants rarely are found not guilty. I think juries want to hear a defendant make his or her case and when they don't, it makes them look guilty.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by bilmore
I would never put that arrogant b*** up for cross.

(Edited to add: Condescending. I forgot condescending.)

I take it you didn't see the Larry King interview that she did. She cried and looked scared during the interview. Could have all been acting, but it did not come through as bitchy or condescending. I thought she did well on that interview and think she would have been able to do well on the stand.

She is a cagey one, and I think she could have acted appropriately on the stand.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Not Me
I take it you didn't see the Larry King interview that she did. She cried and looked scared during the interview. Could have all been acting, but it did not come through as bitchy or condescending. I thought she did well on that interview and think she would have been able to do well on the stand.

She is a cagey one, and I think she could have acted appropriately on the stand.

No, that's why I said cross. King didn't do cross. He did softball. I don't think she could have maintained in the face of some obnoxious lawyer really trying to jerk her chain. I think she would have come across accurately. Heck, I've seen her on TV with a bunch of Girl Scouts working on something, and she nicely bit their heads off, one at a time, and by the end of the show, they were visibly watching her fearfully.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by bilmore
No, that's why I said cross. King didn't do cross. He did softball. I don't think she could have maintained in the face of some obnoxious lawyer really trying to jerk her chain. I think she would have come across accurately. Heck, I've seen her on TV with a bunch of Girl Scouts working on something, and she nicely bit their heads off, one at a time, and by the end of the show, they were visibly watching her fearfully.

But her ass wasn't on the line on that show. I agree that she is a bitch and condescending IRL. However, I also think that she is smart and can act if necessary.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Not Me
But her ass wasn't on the line on that show. I agree that she is a bitch and condescending IRL. However, I also think that she is smart and can act if necessary.

Wait a minute, she's on a show with girl scouts and her ass isn't on the line? Isn't she selling her schtick to girl scouts and the moms watching with them? If she can't act on a tv show used to market herself, she can't act on the stand.

My guess is that she didn't have a good, convincing story, and cross would have laid that bare. The issue to me was never her guilt--Im fairly convinced of that--but whether she should have been prosecuted at all.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
My guess is that she didn't have a good, convincing story, and cross would have laid that bare. The issue to me was never her guilt--Im fairly convinced of that--but whether she should have been prosecuted at all.

Mine, too. It seems to me like pulling someone over for a taillight violation, finding out the taillights actually work, but then prosecuting because the driver said "I checked them this morning" when she really checked them yesterday. That's carrying "lying to the authorities" a bit too far.

(Unless, I suppose, they can show that they had to spend a bunch of extra time or money investigating that they could have avoided had she come clean right away - but I don't really see that here.)

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by bilmore

(Unless, I suppose, they can show that they had to spend a bunch of extra time or money investigating that they could have avoided had she come clean right away - but I don't really see that here.)

One account I read suggested that the motivation was something like that: basically they were pissed off when they discovered she had lied. They would have let her go with the SEC fine/disgorgement had she fessed up, but when they realized she tried to cover up and lie, they went after her.

I suppose it has pretty good value as a deterent

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Wait a minute, she's on a show with girl scouts and her ass isn't on the line? Isn't she selling her schtick to girl scouts and the moms watching with them? If she can't act on a tv show used to market herself, she can't act on the stand.

By ass on the line, I meant going to jail. The sad fact is that part of Martha's brand was her being an uptight socialite bitch. People liked that. It made them feel classy if they followed her advice. Sad, I know, but that was part of her appeal to her audience.

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
My guess is that she didn't have a good, convincing story, and cross would have laid that bare. The issue to me was never her guilt--Im fairly convinced of that--but whether she should have been prosecuted at all.

I agree that she was overcharged and I agree that she was guilty.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Not Me
The sad fact is that part of Martha's brand was her being an uptight socialite bitch. People liked that. It made them feel classy if they followed her advice.

Didn't work for this juror:

"This is a victory for the little guys. No one is above the law."

Don't think her products sold because she was a bitch. Socialite probably--everyone wants to feel like they have some of what the rich have, and she successfully sold that image.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Didn't work for this juror:

I am sure that there were jurors that weren't her fans. I am not a fan of hers. But her fans like her how she is and she is no doubt about it, a condescending bitch. She does not market herself as a warm, nuturing type of person. She is standoffish and easily annoyed by others. Yet her fans like her.

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Don't think her products sold because she was a bitch. Socialite probably--everyone wants to feel like they have some of what the rich have, and she successfully sold that image.

Her products sold for two reasons - people liked what she had to say and people liked her. I don't like her and don't buy her stuff. But she has fans who do like her. It is not like she doesn't come across like a condescending bitch. She does. But not everyone is turned off by that. Apparently some of her jurors are. I don't blame them for feeling that way, but not everyone shares their views.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Not Me
Her products sold for two reasons - people liked what she had to say and people liked her. I don't like her and don't buy her stuff. But she has fans who do like her.

Martha Stewart has made millions by taking decorating and entertaining tips from the urban gay men who invented her schtick, and putting it all into little kits than can be sold to suburban women who tell themselves they have no time to do this shit from scratch. She takes what happens in Chelsea and brings it to Connecticut, and is hailed as a hero.

Quick example --- the better-kept Victorians in the Castro/Noe Valley (read: gay men) have been stringing white Christmas lights in dangling icicle patterns for probably 15 years. When I first saw it, I thought "what a cool idea --- I never would have thought of that." Within a few years, you saw it on Martha. Then they started selling icicle lights at Walgreens. The pattern repeats itself.

The gardening fascination is the only thing she didn't steal. Gay men who garden, like Martha, is doing nothing Gertrude Jekyll didn't do decades ago.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Quick example --- the better-kept Victorians in the Castro/Noe Valley (read: gay men) have been stringing white Christmas lights in dangling icicle patterns for probably 15 years.

I've been doing that on my house here in MN for at least fifteen ye . . . .

oh.shit.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Martha Stewart has made millions by taking decorating and entertaining tips from the urban gay men who invented her schtick, and putting it all into little kits than can be sold to suburban women who tell themselves they have no time to do this shit from scratch.

You obviously haven't read much of Martha's work or seen her shows. She makes everything overly complicated and it is all from scratch.

I don't deny that her ideas are derivative of others; it is just that she takes other's ideas and makes even simple things way more complicated than they need to be. This is why I don't buy her magazine or watch her TV programs.

She borrows quite a bit from the advice/recipes all of our grandmothers gave out. Then she reworks it to make it more difficult to do whatever task it is that you are trying to do. But you get the same results or not much better and sometimes even worse results than if you had you done it the old fashioned way.

This kind of bullshit makes middle America feel sophisticated because they are doing something so much more difficult/complicated than the way their grandmother's taught them how to do it. They like that and they like her snotty "I am rich" attitude and her affected accent.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Not Me
You obviously haven't read much of Martha's work or seen her shows. She makes everything overly complicated and it is all from scratch.

Yeah, but do you not get her catalog? Practically every project she does on the show or in the magazine is associated with a $59 kit that will allow you to do the same thing to the flea market chair/bough of cedar/what-have-you. She does it the hard way on the show, and then sells you the three-easy-step kit. Her entire show is a friggin' infomercial for her catalog.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Not Me
You obviously haven't read much of Martha's work or seen her shows. She makes everything overly complicated and it is all from scratch.

Actually (rather enjoying being a martha wannabe off and on), I find that she doesn't make things more complicated, she just breaks them down and explains them clearly. People no longer know how to do fairly straightforward things from scratch (make a frame, sew a french seam, stencil a wall, refinish a chair, etc.), and she spells them out, step by step, so a monkey could follow along and do it. I've always been rather impressed with how she breaks things down very coherently so you don't make a mistake. The underlying tasks are indeed simple, but it's not that she makes the implementation of simple things more complicated, it's that she knows her audience is a bunch of DIY idiots who are used to getting everything prefab and prepackaged and need to be babied through every little step or they'll screw it up.

Even her recipes are quite simple compared to most of the home, lifestyle or cooking mags out there (but then she adds fennel. I cannot figure out her obession with fennel, she apparently puts it in everything. Must be getting kickbacks from the fennel lobby or something). You wanna see a hideously complicated recipe that no mortal woman can possibly perform in her own kitchen? Go find a back issue of Victoria. Martha's stuff is dead easy, even "can't-boil-water BRC" can follow them.

Granted, the "all from scratch" thing is unnecessary, as a practical matter, but her readers are perfectly aware of that. Sometimes you just want to bake your own cake rather than just mix the stuff in the box with eggs and water. And when you do you need Martha, because we've, frankly, forgotten how.

BR(actually, I spent the weekend after 9/11 baking an orange chiffon cake with orange-scented glaze and candied rind garnish - recipe from Gourmet, not MSL, actually - and the thing was beautiful. Proudest domesticity-related moment of my life. I have about a dozen pictures of the thing, which I hid when the Onion did it's post 9/11 story about the woman helplessly baking a cake in the form of the American Flag. Just thought I'd share.)C