A LEGAL MATTER: No Justice, No Quiche

The Sick-Child Delayed Rebuttal to Dorfman's Rebuttal:

Martha Stewart on trial is a media event, the same way communists "on trial" fifty years ago was a media event. Plenty of celebs got singled out fifty years ago who were no more traitors to the country than Stewart is an inside trader. Moreover, if Stewart were a Man, it would be difficult to reconcile the severity of the charges with the outpouring of disaffection for someone who built their own empire and sweated a long-term public profile. (I can't believe I'm defending Martha Stewart; but there it is.) Jeffrey Toobin in the NEW YORKER said: "...There seems to be a hole at the heart of the government's case. The prosecution never charged Stewart with criminal insider trading -- that is, with acting on an illegal tip from Faneuil. The peculiar result is that she stands accused of lying to cover up a legal stock trade." Now that the judge has dropped the most serious charge, let's see how anxious the jury is to turn her into Leona Helmsley and throw her in the slammer. It's a matter of public record that Trump and W. and Cheney and Ashcroft and scads of others are guilty of far worse, and just because they stand up to pee they get a pass. She's not even a good scapegoat for the market's bubble burst or the surrounding corporate scandals, her star rose long before the web and has little to do with it. And I despise those Enron thieves too, it's molehills and mountain ranges to my eye.