I can't quite seem to put my finger on it, but this whole Martha thing has gotten to be a bit much, and I'm beginning to wonder what it might say about us.

Last month, NBC aired a made-for-TV movie purporting to tell the story of the home improvement mogul's life. Save for the incongruous and unexplained happy resolution of the last few minutes (which seemed as if they might well have been slapped on as a last-minute afterthought -- an editorial stipulation, perhaps, of studio lawyers fearful of a libel suit?), the majority of it felt like it had an unabashedly vicious agenda. The writers of this brilliant piece of prime-time drama seemed to delight in playing their game of character assassination to an audience of millions, apparently lacking either the talent or the will to veil their evident contempt for their subject in any sort of subtlety or balanced perspective. Now I'll grant, I don't know Ms. Stewart personally, and I have little doubt that such a demanding perfectionist can be a royal pain to work with at times. But the lengths they went to seemed more than a bit over the top. I felt embarrassed for Cybil Shepherd, who seemed to sink to a new low as the star of this farce, in no small part because Dan Aykroyd's Julia Child was far more convincing than her Martha Stewart.

NBC's airing of Martha, Inc. comes conveniently on the heels of the media circus surrounding the government's finally getting around to filing specific charges against Ms. Stewart. If it turns out that she indeed broke the law, then certainly she should be held accountable no differently than anyone else. But the press at least (if not the SEC) appears to have singled her out for extraordinary scrutiny. As Alan Reynolds has pointed out (see also this earlier article), Stewart's transaction was but one of thousands of sales of ImClone shares that came in suspiciously close to the company's public announcement of failure to obtain FDA approval for its anti-cancer drug Erbitux. Others are under investigation for similarly suspicious trades, and Stewart's sale of 3,928 shares, 4 days prior to her phone conversation with ImClone CEO Sam Waskal, amounts to a mere drop in the bucket compared to the millions that changed hands that day. Yet for some reason we (or the press) seem to have singled Martha out for tabloid-esque scrutiny, and I can't help but feel that there's something more to this than the facts of the case. Do we resent her celebrity? Her economic success? Is it the daunting image of perfection she so masterfully projects (one which could easily make any mere mortal, myself included, feel domestically inept)? What is it about Martha that makes us seemingly relish in seeing her torn down? Is it easier to accept her existence if we can conclude that she got to where she is by being crooked? (Disregard, for the moment, that she saved a mere $45K by placing the ImClone sale when she did.) Why do we seemingly need to tear others down to make ourselves feel OK? It feels to me as if she has ceased to amuse us, so we've thrown her to the lions, that we might be entertained by watching her torn to shreds.