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don't want to know
Slash-and-burn bio of a slash-and-burn doyenne
By Jeff Bercovici
It's not often that a widely noted book receives a second round of attention just two months after its much-hyped release.
But that's just what's happening with "Martha Inc.," the new Martha Stewart biography, although not for any reason that the domestic oracle would characterize, in her trademark phrase, as "a good thing."
Christopher Byron, the book's author, is a New York Post columnist, and he writes like it.
Denied interviews with Stewart, Byron’s attempts at insight into her thoughts and motives can be hard to take seriously, and his florid, cliché-ridden prose is certainly no joy to read.
But if it's clues you're after, however circumstantial, to the question of the moment -- Could she be guilty? -- "Martha Inc." has got them.
A common refrain of Stewart's admirers over the past few weeks has been that Stewart, a former stockbroker, was too knowledgeable and shrewd to have put herself at risk for a mere $227,824, the amount she netted by selling her ImClone stock just before it tumbled.
"Martha Inc." suggests otherwise. Byron shows how Stewart, acting on a mixture of greed, pettiness and a sense of invincibility, repeatedly jeopardized her personal and business relationships for gain that were sometimes insignificant.
After starting a successful catering business with a college friend, Norma Collier, Stewart went behind her back, booking events on her own and pocketing the proceeds. When Collier found out and confronted her about it, Stewart, rather than apologize, intentionally humiliated her friend further, dumping Collier's belongings in the street and leaving her to pick them up in the rain.
Later, Stewart narrowly avoided disaster when her husband, Andy Stewart, worn down by years of her withering criticism, walked out on her for good in June 1987. An employee and even business partner in some regards, Andy's departure left her vulnerable on a number of fronts.
Given that her persona depended on being able to project an image of perfect domestic bliss, Byron suggests that the divorce, had its details become public sooner, could have scotched her marketing deal with Kmart, then at a sensitive juncture.
At around the same time, Stewart was doing business with another old friend, Kathy Tatlock, whom she had hired to direct her in a series of how-to videos.
Tatlock relates how Stewart informed her, in the most insulting and peremptory way possible, that she had decided not to pay $35,000 worth of expenses Tatlock had incurred working on the project. Inexplicably, Stewart chose to tell her so while the two of them were en route to a meeting with Kmart executives.
Fortunately for Stewart, Tatlock was sufficiently cowed to play along for the duration of the meeting, but she quit immediately afterward.
Perhaps the most telling incident came after Stewart volunteered to open a house she had renovated to the public and donate the proceeds from the $15 admission price to the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a summer camp established by Paul Newman for severely ill children.
What should have been a public relations coup backfired on her when newspaper accounts emerged suggesting that Stewart had arranged things so that her company would reap a sizable and undeserved tax deduction.
When questioned about the setup, Stewart adopted a stance of defensive hostility, saying it was nobody's business why the proceeds were being funneled through her company rather than going straight to the camp. In doing so, she exacerbated the backlash, just as her lack of forthrightness with Congress more recently fanned the flames of the ImClone imbroglio.
As for the Martha-was-a-broker defense, it's worth noting that the firm she worked for was about shady as they come, with virtually all its alumni ending up in legal trouble.
When Levitz Furniture, a stock in which her company was heavily invested, came to the attention of federal investigators, Stewart quietly unloaded her holdings while allowing friends including, Norma Collier, to hang onto theirs.
Stewart may be innocent of insider trading, and she very likely won’t be indicted for it. But anyone who thinks her incapable of such doings, whether because of high intelligence or high morals, might want to read "Martha Inc."
June
24, 2002 © 2002 Media Life-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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