Martha?! Slowly I turned...

Don't get me wrong. I like to make fun of Martha Stewart as much as the next guy. I see her story as a microcosm of the dregs of our celebrity culture -- no talent personage becomes exalted and revered, mediocrity magnified, shallowness and materialism glorified, selfishness aggrandized, personal responsibility discarded, misconduct excused, and society the worse for it all. To top it all off, upon being released from prison today after a 5 month stint, Martha Stewart finds her stock has quadrupled, her fans are further endeared toward her, and she is set to begin a whirlwind rainbow tour of ridiculous proportions.

But...

For some reason, I feel sorry for her. Maybe it's because I've heard she's been humbled by the experience and has found some humility. If this is true, perhaps she's become a better person for it. Maybe the corrective element of punishment has worked in this instance. And if so, maybe she can be at least a faint lesson to our celebrity culture that misconduct has consequences. Maybe she can be a lesson that accepting those consequences with dignity and a newfound perspective is better than the all too familiar victimization whining we see from other celebrities in similar circumstances. We shall see. I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt right now. But if she starts playing the prima donna victimization card, I'll be the first to start heckling her about how she decorated her cell.

I leave you with this:

He suddenly recalled Sonia's words, "Go to the cross roads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and say aloud to the whole world, 'I am a murderer.'" He trembled, remembering that. And the hopeless misery and anxiety of all that time, especially of the last hours, had weighed so heavily upon him that he positively clutched at the chance of this new unmixed, complete sensation. It came over him like a fit; it was like a single spark kindled in his soul and spreading fire through him. Everything in him softened at once and the tears started into his eyes. He fell to the earth on the spot....

He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth, and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture. He got up and bowed down a second time.

--excerpt from Crime And Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)