Another oddity found while cruising the web: A pre-sentencing letter written by Martha Stewart to the judge. It makes an interesting read. Once you get past the traditional extolling of her educational and professional endeavors, and a lengthy attempt to explain her reputation as a harsh perfectionist, you get bizarre passages such as these:



"As a child I was drawn to the novels of Willa Cather, Upton Sinclair, Dostoevsky and Gogol. I loved Cather's My Antonia and decided early on that even if I could not be a pioneer in a true "Westward Ho!" manner, I could attempt to forge new territories for American business. . . . ."



First, I wonder at what age she was plowing through Dostoevsky? Even so, how is this truly relevant? I'm not so sure the judge is impressed by name dropping.



"My vacations have never been restful sojurns, but always information gathering expeditions. Oftentimes I would take friends and children with me so they, too, could experience the wonders of the exotic, the beauties of nature, and the hunt for new ideas. . . . . my trips to the Galapagos, to Egypt, India, Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Panama and Peru have afforded me and the company with myriad product ideas, countless columns for our publications, and masses of material[s] for cookbooks and articles, and even flower sources for Marthasflowers.com."



What is this, a resume or a plea for lieniency? She doesn't sound contrite, she sounds like she's bragging. Doesn't she have an advisor or two on staff to tell her how pretentious this appears?



"And here we come, of course, to the conundrum, the problem, the Kafkaesque confusion, what to do?



The problem is yours, but it is also mine."



I don't think it's wise to use the "we're all in this together" approach under these particular circumstances. Again, doesn't she have a boatload of people advising her on this stuff?



The rest is pretty much more of the same.



I have some sympathy, as prison is going to be quite traumatic for her. But I also enjoy the Martha Stewart Holiday Calendar joke that always circulates around the holidays as much as any working woman who's passed bread baked from frozen commercial bread dough off as fresh at Thanksgiving.